Ben Smith
American journalistWikipedia
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Search complete. 42 mentions across 20 episodes found for "Ben Smith".
Sep 18, 2026
Ben SmithHOST
Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media.
Ben SmithHOST
I'm Ben Smith, the editor of Semaphore, joined by our media editor, Max Tani.
Ben SmithHOST
This week, we're talking to the CEO of Pangram, Max Spiro, whose technology is quite accurately detecting AI-written text across the internet, across media, leading both to some small-scale embarrassment and to some big questions about what is the role of humans and of machines in our lives, and particularly in the media industry.
Ben SmithHOST
We're going to talk to him about how Pangram works, about the escalating game of cat and mouse between increasingly sophisticated AIs on both sides, and about his broader vision of the role of humans in the media of the future.
27 MINS LATER
Max TaniHOST
You've said that you have to train kind of the detection tools on stuff that was produced before basically the rollout of ChatGPT, whatever model it was in 2022. because anything afterwards might be tainted, or a lot of stuff created afterwards might be tainted by some sort of AI.
Max TaniHOST
We're not really exactly sure.
Max TaniHOST
Ben, you feel like at some point it's going to just become indistinguishable.
Max TaniHOST
Ben's writing from Ben's writing assisted by Ben's agent who's helping him kind of manage it.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Andy, uh, real quickly, your background.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
You're over at Semafor, and I keep telling people Ben Smith's site does such an amazing job on economics, finance, geopolitics.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
But I keep telling people y- you understand the Chinese Communist Party at a level that I think a lot of commentators don't.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
What, what's your, what's your background?
Steve BannonHOST
Andy, real quickly, your background.
Steve BannonHOST
You're over at Semaphore, and I keep telling people Ben Smith's site does such an amazing job on economics, finance, geopolitics.
Steve BannonHOST
But I keep telling people you understand the Chinese Communist Party at a level that I think a lot of commentators don't.
Steve BannonHOST
What's your background?
Chris GeidnerGUEST
A single format isn't going to work for every story.
Chris GeidnerGUEST
And the right answer, and this is something that I really got from Ben Smith, who was the editor at BuzzFeed, the top editor, was that, like, you do what the story calls for.
Chris GeidnerGUEST
And if that's a...
Chris GeidnerGUEST
I mean at BuzzFeed it would be even shorter sometimes like if that's like a photo that tells everything and like 250 words to explain why this photo tells everything that's what you do and then you publish don't waste your readers time by going on and writing a 1500 word story and like I often don't necessarily do that but like as you've probably seen like sometimes it will be like a If there's like six opinions in a Supreme Court opinion, I'll highlight like the key paragraph from each justice's opinion.
Peter HambyHOST
Last question before I let you go, Bill.
Peter HambyHOST
Ben Smith at Semafor reported a few weeks ago that David Enrich and Matt Goldstein at The New York Times, who have broken a lot of Epstein stories and written about Leon Black and his relationship with Epstein, they were cranky with your book.
Peter HambyHOST
They called Leon's PR person, I guess, and complained about your coverage.
Peter HambyHOST
Uh, what, what were they cranky about? That you portrayed Leon in a different light, that you couldn't find any evidence of, of wrongdoing as it relates to Ep- Epstein's bad behavior? What, like, what's your response to that?
Nilay PatelHOST
No one can do that with YouTube.
Nilay PatelHOST
Ben Smith from Semaphore was just on the show and he said, people are building real businesses, real careers on top of YouTube, but YouTube has probably to its own benefit and to the detriment of the media industry built a system where it's for individuals and no one has any leverage except for YouTube.
Nilay PatelHOST
You and I cannot get together and go demand terms from YouTube.
Nilay PatelHOST
If we got a thousand YouTubers together to demand terms from YouTube, they would still laugh.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
This is maybe the most unique group we've had.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
We've got Ambassador Carla Sands from the first administration, a daughter of Pennsylvania, and also Ben Smith, the founder and publisher of Semafor.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
I wanna go to you first, Wren.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Talk to me about Secretary Bessent.
8 MINS LATER
Stephen K. BannonHOST
I like that.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Uh, hang on for a second.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Ben Smith, uh, you wrote a brilliant piece this morning.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
There was a crime scene over at the forum, this kinda off-site, uh, all-day-long discussion of major topics.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
He's got a magnificent piece up in The New York Times that we'll push out.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Also, Semafor, Ben Smith, who I think is one of the smartest guys in all media, he's the founder and editor-in-chief, publisher and editor-in-chief of Semafor, which, as you know, we push out a lot of Semafor articles 'cause they're on top of so many topics, particularly economics.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Um, h- headline for Ben Smith.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
And, and Ben Smith has...
Stephen K. BannonHOST
You know, Ben Smith is not MAGA [chuckles], okay? He's, he's definitely not MAGA.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
But he actually attended.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
He came to Dallas.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
One of the reasons he wanted to attend the forum and see Joe Allen, and particularly Lonsdale, 'cause Lonsdale's such a, a, a prominent, uh, figure in the accelerationist movement.
Emily JashinskyHOST
Oh, that's a great example.
Emily JashinskyHOST
For more of this excellent media coverage, you got to listen to Mixed Signals with the always interesting Ben Smith and Max.
Emily JashinskyHOST
And then, of course, follow Max's work at Semaphore, where he's the media editor.
Emily JashinskyHOST
Really appreciate your time today, Max.
Eric NewcomerGUEST
But I think if you're an investor in like open AI anthropic, It's not sort of top five things you're thinking about.
Eric NewcomerGUEST
And I do think investors are still in denial about how much America... hates AI, you know? I think honestly, the argument, the best response I've seen, which I think Ben Smith made to me on my podcast was basically, sure, Americans hate AI, but it's really low on their list of priorities.
Eric NewcomerGUEST
And so then, if it's low on their list of priorities, and tech's going to spend, you know, endless amounts of money to whenever whoever's in office, Does tech just feel confident that Democrats will say, all right, let's not make this about tech and let's do this other priority instead? I think that's the hope.
Eric NewcomerGUEST
But obviously, opposition to tech is getting louder and louder and louder.
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