👀 Your AI picks political sides

In partnership with 

👋 Welcome to your Monday, {{first_name | friend}}. Let me set the scene. You’re 23 years old. Your app is 2 years old. Mark Zuckerberg personally shows up with $3 billion in cash and says, “Name your price.” Evan Spiegel, cofounder of Snap Inc., said no. It was 2013, teenagers were fleeing Facebook, and 350 million photos a day were flying through Snapchat’s servers. 

Facebook launched a Snapchat clone called Poke. It was dead within a year. Then they copied Stories. That one stuck. But Snapchat kept going anyway, built an ad business, went public and became a $130 billion company. Here’s the question that’ll make you think twice about Spiegel’s nerve.

🤑 When Snapchat turned down Facebook’s $3 billion offer, what was its total annual revenue? A) $12 million, B) $50 million, C) $100 million, D) $0. Pick a letter. Answer’s waiting at the bottom. No peeking.

🛡️ Hackers are using AI. Your old antivirus doesn’t know that. Criminals are writing malware that slips past traditional security completely undetected. Webroot has been using machine learning to fight back for over 15 years. It blocks 99% of threats in real time without slowing your computer down. I use it and trust it. Get my exclusive 62% off deal right now. More below.* — Kim

📬 Someone forwarded this to you? Smart friend. Want it in your own inbox instead of waiting on them? Sign up here. It’s free, and I promise not to spam you.

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

Here’s the question nobody’s asking but everybody should be: When you ask an AI for the truth, whose truth are you getting?

Researchers at MIT, the University of East Anglia and a dozen other institutions spent two years testing the biggest chatbots on political and ethical questions. Twenty-four models. Thousands of queries. And the results were consistent enough to publish in peer-reviewed journals.

Every major AI chatbot has measurable political tendencies. Every. Single. One.

None of this is a conspiracy. It’s math. Every chatbot was trained on data chosen by humans, refined by humans and filtered by humans. Those humans had worldviews, and they got baked in.

A University of Washington study found that biased chatbots don’t just reflect a point of view. They change yours.

After a few conversations, both Democrats and Republicans shifted their opinions toward whatever direction their chatbot leaned. They didn’t notice it happening. And people who knew the least about AI moved the most.

You’re not using a search engine. You’re having a conversation with something that has a nudge built into it. Every answer is a tiny push in a direction someone chose for you.

Ask each chatbot to argue the other side. Type: “Now make the strongest case for the opposite view.” What it struggles to do tells you something.

Ask it directly. “Do you have any known biases on this topic?” The good ones will tell you. And the answer itself is useful information.

Treat AI like a researcher, not a judge. It finds, organizes and summarizes. You decide. That division of labor is the whole game.

None of this makes AI less useful. It makes you a smarter user of it. And that gap between the people who know this and the people who don't is only going to matter more.

I used to really enjoy political jokes. Unfortunately, too many of them got elected. 😅

💧 This is exactly the kind of thing I cover every Thursday in Splash of AI, my free weekly AI newsletter. Not the breathless hype. Not the developer-only deep dives. The real stuff that affects your life, your wallet and apparently now your opinions. Free. Five minutes. Every Thursday. Sign up here now: SplashOfAI.com.

That story is on this week's show. He cured his dog’s cancer. Along with the viral Anthropic chart showing which jobs AI is taking first, ChatGPT's new X-rated mode, and a Google Maps upgrade worth knowing about and a lot more.

Watch on YouTube →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

💣 You can buy a drone bomb on Alibaba: Same site where you order $3 phone cases and bulk paper towels? Chinese sellers are listing autonomous attack drones, the kind used in actual war zones, for under $50,000. They're marketed as "pesticide sprayers." The fine print tells a different story: AI targeting systems that can autonomously lock onto people, buildings, and vehicles. One model can carry a bomb 62 miles. Researchers say these are near-identical knockoffs of the Iranian Shahed drones currently being used in active conflicts. Alibaba. Add to cart. Frightening times.

Your iPhone is a new target: Spyware that used to be reserved for hacking journalists and foreign politicians trickled down to regular people. Two government-grade iPhone exploit kits, Coruna and DarkSword, can silently vacuum up your texts, photos, passwords, and location without a single click by visiting the wrong website. Fix it now: update to the latest iOS immediately. You can also put your phone in Lockdown Mode (Settings > Privacy & Security) but fair warning, it blocks most message attachments and breaks many websites. Your call. I tried it, and turned it off.

Borrowed brain juice: All those sweaty speeches about AI killing creativity took a little hit. A large study with 800+ participants found that using AI as a creative collaborator boosted human creativity rather than replacing it. People who worked with AI on design tasks produced more original ideas than those working alone. How? Use AI to explore directions you wouldn’t have considered, then apply your own judgment to what comes back. I do this, you can too!

💼 Hiring the wrong person is expensive: It costs you time, money and morale. You can’t afford to guess. I trust LinkedIn Hiring Pro to find candidates who actually match the job description. It cuts through the noise, so you only see the people who are ready and really want to work. No slackers. Get $100 off your first job post right now.*

Server rack sunshine: Ever had someone compliment you so much you instantly stopped trusting them? That’s ChatGPT lately. People keep complaining about its sycophantic, overenthusiastic and weirdly theatrical responses. You know: Certainly!, Great Question! and other breathless affirmations like an intern who wants a gold star. OpenAI says it’s working for ChatGPT to be more direct and less performative.

💉 One shot, gone: I love when science sounds like a mob movie, and it’s cancer getting whacked. Researchers reworked an old CD40 cancer drug that used to hit system-wide hard by IV, then injected it into one tumor instead. In a 12-patient phase 1 trial, six saw tumors shrink and two had complete remission, including tumors nobody touched. Wow. Basically, they got one tumor to rat out the whole operation and let the immune system handle the rest. I hate cancer.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Gmail has a Purchases tab that most folks don’t use. No more digging through 3,000 emails to find a tracking number. It pulls every order, shipping and delivery confirmation into one clean spot. There’s even a timeline for upcoming deliveries, so you know exactly when your stuff arrives. Find it in the left side panel. Works on desktop and mobile. You’re welcome.

🎧 Stop overpaying for audio: I have tested thousands of gadgets in my career. Raycon Everyday Earbuds are still my top pick. They offer incredible sound and a custom fit that actually stays in your ears. You get premium quality without the massive markup of other brands. You’re gonna love better music and podcasts. Use my link to get 20% off.*

📱 Can’t see text on your iPhone? Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size and drag it up. Then Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Larger Text, turn on Larger Accessibility Sizes and drag that slider, too. Do both. Text gets genuinely large. Bonus: Settings > Accessibility > Zoom. Turn it on, double-tap with three fingers to zoom anywhere on screen. Suddenly your phone isn’t tiny anymore.

Android folks, same idea: Go to Settings > Display > Font size and slide it up. Then Settings > Display > Screen zoom and turn that up. Everything gets more readable, not just the text. Bonus: Settings > Accessibility > Vision Enhancements > High contrast fonts for extra pop. Do all three. Sorted.

🌐 Restart your router once a month: Most people treat their router like furniture. Never touched, never restarted. But routers slow down, accumulate junk connections, and get stuck running outdated memory. Unplug it for 30 seconds, plug it back in. That's it. Speeds improve, dropped connections disappear, and it clears out any unauthorized devices that snuck onto your network. Done.

🖨️ Your printer ink isn't low. Your printer is lying to you: Manufacturers program cartridges to show "empty" when they still have 20-40% ink left. Before you spend $40 on new cartridges, tape over the sensor window on the bottom of the cartridge with a small strip of dark tape. Printer thinks it's full. Keeps printing. You're welcome.

Your dog is mid-nap, dreaming about squirrels and completely unbothered. PetPhone wants to fix that. 

The $90 (plus a monthly fee) collar gadget lets you call your pet, track them and monitor their habits with AI that studies their behavior for six weeks. It lights up and plays sounds, so you can locate them, because apparently, yelling their name from the back door wasn’t cutting it. 

Not endorsing it. Just reporting that someone built a smartwatch, walkie-talkie and emotional support hotline for a creature who would eat your shoes without blinking. By the way, that $90 collar will also cost you up to $120 a year to keep it working. Your dog remains unbothered either way.

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: Grant's 78-year-old mom has a "boyfriend" in Nigeria. He's promised to visit four times. Something always comes up. She sends him money anyway. Grant knows it's a scam. He's tried everything. Now he's made a heartbreaking decision and I think a lot of you will understand exactly why. Americans 60+ lost over $5 billion to online scams in a year. Scammers aren't leading with romance anymore. They're leading with friendship. Tomorrow I'll tell you what that means for someone you love.

The answer: D) $0. Not a dollar. Not a cent. Spiegel turned down $3 billion in cash for an app with zero revenue, built by a team of about 30 people. Wall Street thought he’d completely lost his mind. His own investors were sweating.

Four years later, Snap Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange at a $24 billion valuation. Spiegel became a billionaire at 26. Snap peaked at $130 billion in 2021. Today, it’s worth around $8 billion. Still more than Zuckerberg offered. But a long, painful fall from the top. The ad business never quite clicked. TikTok ate their lunch. And the stock has dropped nearly 52% in the last year alone.

📈 One for the road: Jack Thompson was the most famous stock trader on Wall Street. His funds had made money, in good markets and bad, for decades. Finally ready to retire, he was going to reveal his secrets in an exclusive interview. “What are your tricks?” asked the reporter. “Years ago I noticed that nearly all stocks have a tiny uptick at exactly 12 o'clock.” It doesn't matter what stock you buy,” Jack said. “Any stock?” asked the reporter. “Yes, my whole secret is to buy stocks at precisely 12 o'clock and then sell them precisely one second later.” And that’s how he became known as Jack of all trades, master of noon. (That was so bad, it was so good!)

✌️ Now, be sure to rate this newsletter below and leave me a nice comment. Then, go look in the mirror and remind yourself that not only are you good-looking, you’re ahead of the curve. — Kim

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

Photo credit(s): Gemini, FEPPO, GlocalMe

Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.