How big tech is censoring LLMs
November 18, 2025
104,131
618
61
0.65%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Big Think Episodes Around November 18, 2025
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
3:22Now PlayingHow big tech is censoring LLMs
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelThis interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @TempletonFoundation.
Subscribe to The Well on YouTube ►
Watch all of Mchangama's interviews ►
What happens when the technology mediating nearly all our information begins to decide what speech is acceptable?
Free speech scholar Jacob Mchangama warns that AI’s growing role in search, email, and word processing means its hidden biases could shape freedom of thought itself. With his team at the Future of Free Speech, Mchangama ran an experiment that tested 268 prompts against popular LLMs and found that the results often reflected inconsistent standards.
According to Mchangama, this shows why ownership of AI models matters, since their values, incentives, and pressures ultimately shape public access to information.
Read the video transcript ►
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Jacob Mchangama:
Jacob Mchangama founded and leads The Future of Free Speech, is a research professor at Vanderbilt, and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). A prolific commentator and author on free speech and human rights, he created the podcast “Clear and Present Danger” and wrote the 2022 book “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About The Well
Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds.
Together, let's learn from them.
Subscribe to the weekly newsletter ►
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Well on your favorite platforms:
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.