The Interface

Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, joins Jess Maddox and Thomas Germain on The Interface to talk about The Social Reckoning, the new film that follows her story and acts as a sequel to The Social Network. It stars Mikey Madison as Haugen, alongside Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White. Haugen, who leaked internal documents known as the Facebook Files in 2021, explains why she believes Meta (formerly Facebook) needed outside scrutiny, and what she saw as a product manager that changed her mind about fixing it from the inside. She discusses what she says the documents and court filings reveal about teen safety on Instagram and Facebook, and the platform's impact on schools. She also looks at what has changed since 2021, from the wave of US lawsuits over social media design and harm to children, to the EU's Digital Services Act and Australia's under-16 social media ban. Haugen explains what she thinks "practical, moderate oversight" could look like. She also talks about the personal cost of blowing the…

The Interface returns for season two with a new co-host. BBC technology columnist Thomas Germain is joined by Jessica Maddox, a University of Georgia professor who studies memes and internet culture, to break down the tech stories that actually matter in your day-to-day life. Is AI going to kill us all? After high-profile tech workers warned of an AI apocalypse, Tom and Jess look at where the industry's "P(doom)" numbers come from and why some experts say they're based on vibes rather than science. They weigh warnings from Anthropic safety advisor Evan Hubiger, against computer scientist Yann LeCun's view that the risk is close to zero, and ask why AI companies are calling for regulation just before the US midterms. Meta's Muse AI agent: what happens when you give an AI agent access to your inbox? Tom sets up Muse, Meta's new personal AI agent, and hands over 20 years of emails and his calendar. It can negotiate bills and buy things on your behalf, but what does it mean for privacy and the very future of the…

This week on The Interface: is World Cup tech taking the human magic out of football? For our season finale before the summer break, Karen, Thomas and Nicky start with the World Cup - and ask what happens when football becomes a showcase for ever more technology. This year’s tournament has brought referee body cameras, faster semi-automated offside decisions, and more AI-powered match analysis for teams and broadcasters, all in the name of accuracy, transparency and engagement. But as the game gets ever more engineered, there’s a bigger question underneath it: do these tools improve the sport, or do they slowly sand away some of the human error, chaos and competitive tension that made it thrilling in the first place? Also this week: the infinite workweek. AI was supposed to take tasks off our plates — but in practice, it may be doing the opposite. Microsoft’s research on the“infinite workday” warned that work is already bleeding into mornings, nights and weekends, and that AI could make that worse if…

This week on The Interface: the UK’s under-16s social media ban - is America next? The UK is preparing to go further than almost any other country on children and social media: under-16s will be blocked from platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X, while messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are expected to be excluded. Ministers are also considering overnight curfews and limits on infinite scroll for under-18s, with implementation targeted for spring 2027. Karen, Tom and Nicky ask the obvious question: will it work? Australia’s early results suggest enforcement is hard: the Molly Rose Foundation found 61% of 12–15-year-olds who had used restricted platforms still had access to at least one account, and 70% of those still using banned sites said it was easy to get around the rules. That raises a bigger issue too: if this all depends on age verification, does everyone end up having to prove their age just to use the internet? And with 64% of US voters already saying they…

This week on The Interface: is AI quietly sending your CV to the graveyard? Karen starts with the growing role of AI in hiring and why it may be far more powerful, and more worrying, than most jobseekers realise. Automated hiring systems are now used across large parts of the labour market, and Stanford researchers say a handful of dominant models are creating an “algorithmic monoculture”, where the same software can shape outcomes across multiple employers. Their recent study of more than 4 million job applications found repeated racial disparities in AI‑based screening, raising the stakes for anyone applying into a market where software may judge you before a human ever does. We look at how these systems scan CVs, how candidates are trying to game them, and what happens when tools designed to “streamline” recruitment start quietly deciding who never even gets a chance. Also this week: Thomas asks whether slow messaging might actually be better for us than instant messaging. After trying Roost — an app that…

This week on The Interface: the horrifying world of the TikTok Farlands. Tom and Nicky head deep into the TikTok Farlands - the semi‑mythical place you supposedly reach if you scroll too far, too late, until your feed stops looking normal and starts serving up surreal, eerie and deeply unhinged videos. The name comes from Minecraft’s Far Lands, the glitched edge of the map where the world used to break apart, and TikTok users have borrowed it to describe the “end of the algorithm”: a strange zone of distorted edits, ominous warnings, weirdcore imagery and recurring figures like the now‑iconic fat bee playing the violin. TikTok’s Farlands have become a shorthand for what happens when doomscrolling tips into digital folklore. But the Farlands aren’t just a joke. Tom and Nicky ask what this trend says about internet culture now. In a platform ecosystem dominated by polish, branding and optimisation, the Farlands feel like the return of an older internet: raw, surreal, handmade and proudly bizarre. At the same…

Google is changing up its search engine. At its recent developer conference, among a host of new AI tools, it announced the biggest changes to Google Search in its history. What will we see now? An intelligent search box. Longer text predictions. More answers to search queries instead of a list of websites. But if Google keeps us inside the answer box, with fewer clicks and fewer website visits, this could potentially break the economic model of the modern web. How will this change the Internet and our experience of it? Also this week: To the Vatican, where Pope Leo XIV issued a document this week, calling for the ‘disarming’ of AI. In ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (Magnificent Humanity), the Pope warned that AI must be subject to rigorous ethical constraints. How is the Vatican attempting to influence tech companies? And with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah in attendance, Karen asks why are AI companies equally interested in religion? Nicky has been following the latest developments with Roblox. The online gaming…

Karen Hao’s away this week — but it’s a special episode: Thomas and Nicky welcome their first ever guest, senior reporter at MS NOW, Brandy Zadrozny, to decode the tech stories rewiring your week and your world. First: are we heading for a world without screens? Bloomberg reports Apple is in late‑stage testing of AirPods with tiny cameras - not for selfies, but to give Siri “eyes” so it can understand what you’re looking at and respond in real time. We explore what that signals: less phone‑tapping, more ambient “AI companion” computing - and why earbuds (oddly) might be a more plausible bridge to screenless tech than headsets or smart glasses. If the interface moves from screens to always‑on assistants, what changes about attention, privacy - and who gets to shape the world you experience? Next: the hidden clipping industry flooding your feed - now in politics. Brandy takes us inside the booming “clipping economy”: armies of freelancers paid to slice long content into viral short‑form clips and push them…

AI is coming for your job — but not in the way you think. Karen says the real shock isn’t mass replacement (yet). It’s that AI is already reshaping work into something more precarious, more fragmented, and easier to squeeze. Data annotation and “AI training” are booming - but now the growth is in skilled labour. AI firms are hoovering up graduates and specialists to teach models the expertise they still can’t reliably produce. That’s the uncomfortable irony of “PhD‑capable” AI: to get there, it needs real PhDs (and near‑PhDs) feeding it knowledge, task by task. As Sam Altman once put it: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” Meanwhile, the graduate job market is shrinking fast. Is this the “uberisation” of knowledge work - stable careers broken into gigs, paid by the piece, constantly monitored - with workers training the systems that may later deskill or replace them? Nicky follows the dark logic of the online “health information…

Who is paying for the influencer campaign making you fear Chinese AI? A new report alleges a coordinated influencer marketing campaign urging audiences to back “American AI” while quietly stoking fear about Chinese AI. Marketing agencies are reportedly offering creators thousands of dollars per post to weave in “Team USA” talking points as lifestyle content - with limited transparency about who is funding the message, and why. We dig into what this means for AI policy, public trust, and the information you absorb without realising it. Because the scariest part may not be China at all - it’s that political and corporate interests can buy the vibe of your feed while most of us never see the strings. Also this week: how to stop AI turning your brain to mush. Neuroscientists are increasingly watching for signs of cognitive offloading, when tools make thinking feel optional, potentially weakening memory and critical thinking. Some early research suggests lower brain engagement when people rely on AI for tasks…

What's the playbook that gets real‑world breaking news moments to become instant conspiracy theories? After an attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, clips and early reports were quickly represented as “staged” narratives online. We dig into why big, chaotic events are now prime fuel for conspiracy thinking, how the state does little to suppress it and what this does to trust when the public feels exhausted by the constant churn of misinformation. Next, Meta’s next training data source: its own employees. Reports say Meta is rolling out tracking software on US staff computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes — and even occasional screen snapshots — to help train AI agents that can perform work tasks. Meta says the data won’t be used for performance assessment, but it raises a bigger question: when “how you work” becomes training data, who is watching, and what will happen to your job when the training is complete? And finally: the age of “too perfect”…

Tim Cook resigns: what does a new Apple boss mean for your smartphone? Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down later this year, with John Ternus — a long‑time hardware leader — named as his successor. We look past the boardroom drama and asks what this means for the thing most of us hold all day: your phone. Apple’s design choices set the tone for the entire industry; when Apple shifts, everyone else tends to follow. And if the next era is led by a hardware engineer, does that point to a different kind of iPhone future — in how it looks, behaves, and what Apple chooses to prioritise (or drop)? Also this week: Geese — psyop or marketing? A band called Geese seemed to come out of nowhere - and now they’re playing Coachella. But alongside their rise, a bigger question has caught fire: how much of what we think is “organic” online is actually engineered? A WIRED report digs into “trend simulation”: networks of accounts, seeded clips and manufactured discourse designed to push an artist up the algorithmic ladder.…

Claude Mythos: is this a real risk or the AI industry’s latest fear campaign? Anthropic’s unreleased model, Claude Mythos, is being talked about in the headlines as the next genuinely dangerous leap in AI - powerful enough, the company says, that it can’t be safely released to the public. But we at The Interface think we should take this self created panic with big serving of caution. The AI industry has learned that “too dangerous” can be a safety claim but also a major a publicity strategy: warn loudly, drip‑feed details, then proceed anyway. Until we know more about what Mythos can actually do, and how those claims are being independently verified, aren't we just in familiar territory: another episode of a self-publicising sector acting like the boy who cried wolf? Also this week: we take on one of the most repeated bits of modern wellbeing advice, the idea that your phone’s blue light is wrecking your sleep. The evidence is messier than the panic, and the bigger culprit may be the lighting habits of…

Walmart’s digital price tags. The retail giant is rolling out shelf labels that allow prices to be updated instantly across stores. This isn’t a new trend. Airlines and hotels constantly adjust pricing based on demand. But if grocery prices can change in real time, what will this mean for your bill? And will pricing ever be adjusted using customer data or behavioural signals to maximise profit? Nicky launches the Great Interface Banana Pricing Study to monitor digital price tags in your local store. Also this week: Houston we have a problem… with our Microsoft Outlook. Artemis II’s crew on the way to the moon reported issues with their email inbox. While the glitch was eventually fixed, it raised eyebrows on earth and questions about the popularity of Microsoft Products. Microsoft still has a massive user base. Windows remains dominant in PC gaming. But the real backbone is enterprise: businesses are already deeply embedded in Microsoft’s ecosystem, and switching is costly and disruptive. What would the…

Infidelity in the fruit bowl; why are so many people watching AI generated fruit fall in and out of love? In a week of contrasting fortunes — Fruit Love Island, the TikTok synthetic‑reality hit, goes viral while OpenAI’s text‑to‑video tool Sora shuts down - Tom and Nicky ask what our love/hate relationship with “AI slop” says about taste, humour and, yes, misogyny. And who actually earns money when the content pipeline is bots all the way? Also this week: After the Meta verdict: Is the Meta verdict Big Tech's Big Tobacco moment? In the first verdict of its kind, a US jury found Meta and YouTube liable for designing products that harmed a young user - potentially a huge moment for the social media industry. Nicky and Tom unpack what it actually means for the rest of us: what counts as “addictive” design; why plaintiffs are targeting features like infinite scroll, autoplay and algorithmic nudges rather than user‑posted content; and how legal appeals, copycat cases and potential product changes could reshape…

"Am I really real?" Tom runs a simple test, involving his dear Aunt Eleanor, with far‑reaching consequences: can a real human prove they’re not a machine? The experiment was sparked by two viral moments; Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambling to show he was alive after a suspected fake image, and a too‑perfect “MAGA dream girl” who convinced millions she was real. We explore the “liar’s dividend”, where the flood of AI‑made images and videos lets anyone dismiss inconvenient truths as fakes. And if “seeing is believing” no longer holds, what should replace it? Also this week: Tech and the brain; what is a brain implant (a brain‑computer interface), and what can it actually do today? China has cleared a device called NEO for wider use beyond clinical trials, a huge milestone. We set that against Elon Musk’s Neuralink, decades of research, and new advances decoding speech and complex thoughts for people with paralysis or neurodegenerative illness. It’s life‑changing medicine - but what if funding…

When we play a game or fill in a form, are we training robots without knowing it - and would we consent if asked? Remember Pokémon Go? The company behind it is repurposing the 30 billion images players captured to help robots navigate the real world. It’s the tip of a bigger trend: turning play into data collection. From CAPTCHAs to viral stunts like the Mannequin Challenge, our seemingly harmless online challenges are being quietly funnelled into AI training sets. It’s clever, but it raises awkward questions about consent, transparency, and who profits when our leisure becomes free labour for automation. Also this week: the meme‑ification of war: games companies, anime producers and pop culture stars bristle at alleged use of their IP in pro‑war White House memes, we look at how politicians are using memes to lessen the severity of the war in Iran - and their role in a new kind of political campaigning. And the personality of AI: Alexa’s new “adult” mode isn’t sexy; it’s sassy. How tech firms craft voice,…

What happens when the tools built to protect children risk exposing everyone else, and who should decide which parts of the internet are “safe” enough to access without showing ID? As lawmakers in the US push forward with the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a much bigger battle over the future shape of the internet is coming into view. At the heart of the debate is age verification, a measure designed to protect children from pornography and harmful content, but one that could force all of us to prove who we are every time we go online. Digital‑rights advocates warn that tying government‑issued ID to everyday browsing could usher in unprecedented levels of state and corporate surveillance, fundamentally altering how the internet works and how we behave on it.  Also this week: as Meta said subcontracted workers might sometimes review content, including films and images, captured by its AI smart glasses for the purpose of improving the "experience", we ask, who can see what you can see, and do you want them…

As Washington moved toward a joint US and Israeli response to Iran, a parallel fight over military access to frontier AI broke into the open. Anthropic, maker of Claude, refused a Pentagon demand for “unrestricted” use of its models, citing red lines on domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth then labelled the firm a “supply chain risk,” a designation intended to bar defence contractors from using Anthropic’s tools. Within hours, OpenAI announced a deployment deal with the Pentagon, then hurried to revise and clarify its safeguards after a backlash. The consumer response was immediate. Users posted cancellations under “Cancel ChatGPT,” third‑party trackers reported a sharp spike in uninstalls, and Anthropic’s Claude climbed the app charts. We ask why the military wants large‑scale AI, what it is already using it for, and what this showdown reveals about democratic oversight, privacy and accountability when state demand meets platform power. Also this week:…

In 2016, diplomats reported a strange burst of sound — followed by months of debilitating symptoms. “Havana Syndrome” sparked questions and conspiracy theories across the web about a possible unseen weapon. Now, new reports from Norway describe a scientist experiencing similar effects after testing a microwave device. Host Nicky Woolf asks: if such technology exists, who owns it and what are they doing with it next? Also on The Interface this week: At the landmark trial in LA, social media companies like WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube are defending their platforms against the accusation that they are addictive to young people; we ask what the fallout from the trial will be and what legal clause, Section 230, that dates from 1934 really means in the social media age. Plus, host Karen Hao has spent the week rubbing shoulders with the great and the good from the AI companies at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, but what really goes on the shadowy meeting rooms around the fringe? The Interface is your weekly guide…

Do you trust the answers that AI chat bots like Chat GPT, Claude and Grok tell you? This week, The Interface put entirely fictitious information on the internet, to see if the AI chat bots would show any kind of caution in reporting it as the truth. They did not. Our example was about a made-up hot dog eating championship, but what if other operators out there are steering the AI towards more sinister, but equally untrue, information about health, politics or unregulated products? We ask what checks are, and should be, in place. Also on The Interface this week: Are data centres eating your hometown? Governments around the world are prioritising planning applications from big tech firms to build the data centres required to power the AI rollout but what is that doing to the local areas where they are being built? And Elon Musk has applied to launched up to a million satellites into space to expand his Starlink internet empire, we ask should one man have the power to switch the internet on and off around the…

Ring’s new AI “lost dog” feature promises to reunite missing pets with their owners using doorbell camera footage. But could this same technology be used to build a far more sinister surveillance network? Our hosts take a closer look at Search Party, announced in an ad during this year’s Super Bowl, and explore why this seemingly feel-good function is sparking privacy concerns. Also on The Interface this week: Why does the TikTok takeover in the US affect you, even if you've never touched the app? And how did one ad campaign at the Super Bowl reveal the fierce rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic? The Interface is your weekly guide to the tech rewiring your week and our world. Hosted by journalists Tom Germain, Karen Hao, and Nicky Woolf, each episode unpacks week-by-week the unfolding story of how technology is shaping all of our futures. No guests. No jargon. Just three sharp voices debating the tech stories that matter - whether they shook a government, broke the internet, or quietly tipped the balance of…

Want to know how your world is changing, and what it will be like to live in a future being built for you right now? Don’t be distracted by politics - it’s tech driving that change. Karen Hao, Nicky Woolf and Tom Germain - three of the sharpest voices in tech - dive into the stories behind the headlines: AI breakthroughs, big-tech power, digital culture, cybersecurity, misinformation - and discover what's happening in the most bizarre corners of the internet. Every week, the trio unpack the tech stories that matter: whether they shake governments, reshape industries, or quietly alter how we live, work and connect. Informed, curious and clear-eyed, The Interface is your guide to understanding one of the defining stories of our time. Launching Thursday 12 February on BBC Sounds in the UK - and wherever you get your podcasts. The Interface is a BBC Studios Production. Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford Executive Editor: Philip Sellars