AI Summary
5 min readThe first episode of Into the Machine opens with a visceral image: the moment you wake up, reach for your phone, and feel the clarity of your own mind dissolve into something else. That something else is not a device or an app, but a system—"invisible, intimate, hungry." The host, Tobias Rose-Stockwell, a media researcher and author of Outrage Machine, frames this system as the central problem of our era. He quotes Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who says bluntly: "We are being programmed. These algorithms know our preferences better than us." The show is built around a single thesis: the algorithms that power our social feeds, search results, and AI tools are not neutral tools. They are reshaping human attention, trust, and agency, and we are only beginning to understand the cost.
The Machine as a System, Not a Gadget
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Machine is Already Here** - Tobias opens with the visceral experience of waking up to a phone and feeling the shift into an algorithmic system that is intimate, hungry, and invisible.
- 2 (01:40) **Introducing the Host and the Show's Mission** - Tobias Rose-Stockwell, media researcher and author of *Outrage Machine*, explains why he created this podcast.
- 3 (02:26) **Call to Subscribe** - Tobias closes the trailer with a direct invitation.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
We are living in a strange moment.
AI is everything, everywhere, all at once. Democracy is very much on the ropes. We are all confused about what comes next.
Upstream of our troubles are a handful of algorithms that are legible to us for now. Yet newer systems rapidly being deployed are far more powerful, and far more influential than social media ever was.
Over the coming months I’ll be releasing conversations with some of the smartest people I know unpacking these issues, and sharing my essays in video form on my YouTube channel here. Guests like: Jonathan Haidt, Tim Urban, Esther Perel, among others.
We’re on the threshold of a very strange transfer of power — from human brains to artificial ones — that will very likely determine the quality of the rest of our lives. This is a show dedicated to uncovering what comes next.
I’d love for you to join me.
-Tobias
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Get full access to Into The Machine at tobias.substack.com/subscribe
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