thesis proposition

DEAN’S BOOK w/ Prof. CONNIE GRIFFIN

Honors291g-cdg’s blog.

How to Write a Paper Topic Proposal & Thesis Statement

•    PART 1 OF THE ASSIGNMENT: PAPER TOPIC PROPOSAL The formal research paper or honors thesis will provide you with an opportunity to more fully develop the background and implications of one of the topics presented during the semester or explore a related topic not covered. Your paper topic proposal requires research in order to make your proposal as close to your paper topic as possible. I strongly suggest you come to office hours to discuss your topic proposal with me, because I will review all proposals for viability and reject any inappropriate or undoable topics. The written proposal must include the following 2 things: 1.    Your proposed paper topic: This part of the proposal is one sentence. Keep your paper topic narrow (but not so narrow that there are no scholarly sources available on the topic). 2.    Why the topic is interesting and important: Address how you will focus the topic. If you choose a topic that is not of interest to you, it will show in your paper. This topic must remain of interest to you for two semesters, so give it some serious consideration. As we cover topics in class, undoubtedly something will come up that you want to learn more about. This would be an ideal paper topic. This part of the assignment requires that you include two to three paragraphs about why this topic is interesting and important. Why should the reader care about Roger Williams’s relationship with the Narragansett Indians? If you simply retell the story of his exile from Massachusetts and what he thought of the Narragansett religious beliefs and practices, that’s a book report, not an honors level research paper. However, if you explore the significance Narragansett religion had on Williams, his writings, and his life, you have the makings of an interesting and important research paper. It would require research pertaining to the role of missionaries in the American colonies, research of the Puritan philosophy and why Williams was banned from Massachusetts Bay Colony, and research of Narragansett beliefs and religious views and how they were impacted by the English and Dutch.

What should your paper topic be?  Select a course-related topic. I suggest you write about an area that most interests you and in which you might already have some background knowledge. What do you want to learn more about? What are you interested in? Avoid choosing a topic that bores you. Sustained interest in your topic is important, as a topic that bores you makes for a boring paper. It is unlikely you will be able to fool the reader into believing you liked a topic that you didn’t actually like.

Now, narrow down your topic:  Once you’ve chosen a topic, ask yourself if it’s narrow enough for you to tackle in the paper or honors thesis you will be writing. Narrow topics generally result in the best papers. One important consideration is the availability of material. Therefore, before making a final decision on your topic, do some initial research to find out the type, quality, and quantity of information available. Finally, how much time do you have to write your paper? The earlier you begin your paper, the more thorough the treatment your topic will receive. If you can’t begin your paper early in the semester, consider limiting your topic so you can deal with it adequately.

•    PART 2 OF THE ASSIGNMENT: THESIS STATEMENT What is a thesis statement?  A thesis statement is “a proposition stated as a conclusion which you will then demonstrate or ‘prove’ in your paper.”  It is the focal point around which your research will revolve. It is usually stated in the form of an assertion or statement you resolve through your research. It’s not a question; it’s an answer, such as: “Key decisions in large U.S. cities are made by a handful of individuals, drawn largely from business, industrial, and municipal circles, who occupy the top of the power hierarchy.” “Cigarette smoking harms the body by constricting the blood vessels, accelerating the heartbeat, paralyzing the cilia in the bronchial tubes, and activating excessive gastric secretions in the stomach.” A thesis takes a position on an issue. Because you must take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement in your research paper. It is different from a topic sentence in that a thesis statement is not neutral. It announces, in addition to the topic, the argument you want to make or the point you want to prove. This is your own opinion that you intend to back up. This is your reason and motivation for writing. A thesis statement: i)    tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. ii)    is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. iii)    directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel. iv)    makes a claim that others might dispute. v)    is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation. After you have done some preliminary research and reading on your narrowed-down topic, you should formulate a single-sentence thesis statement.

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion – convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is the purpose of the thesis statement?  The thesis statement guides you, enabling you to focus your research paper and outline what you will write. It allows you to clarify your thinking and determine what is relevant and irrelevant as you do your research. Your research paper must be thesis-driven. A high school level “report” will not receive a passing grade. The thesis must pull together the analysis that follows. Your thesis statement must be specific – it should cover only what you will discuss in your research paper and must be supported with specific evidence. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper. Early in your paper I should be able to locate the thesis statement. If I ask you “Where is the thesis statement?” you should be able to point to it immediately.

How do you come up with a thesis statement?  A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process and careful deliberation after preliminary research. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading a writing assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis,” a basic main idea, an argument that you think you can support with evidence but that may need adjustment along the way. Your topic may change somewhat as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Samples: 1)    The non-thesis thesis: You must take a stand or you’ll end up with a “non-thesis thesis.” a)    Bad Thesis 1: In his article, Stanley Fish shows that we don’t really have the right to free speech. b)    Bad Thesis 2: This paper will consider the advantages and disadvantages of certain restrictions on free speech. c)    Better Thesis 1: Stanley Fish’s argument that free speech exists more as a political prize than as a legal reality ignores the fact that even as a political prize it still serves the social end of creating a general cultural atmosphere of tolerance that may ultimately promote free speech in our nation just as effectively as any binding law. d)    Better Thesis 2: Even though there may be considerable advantages to restricting hate speech, the possibility of chilling open dialogue on crucial racial issues is too great and too high a price to pay. 2)    The overly broad thesis: A thesis should be as specific as possible, and it should be tailored to reflect the scope of the paper. It is not possible, for instance, to write about the history of English literature in a five-page paper. In addition to choosing simply a smaller topic, strategies to narrow a thesis include specifying a method or perspective or delineating certain limits. a)    Bad Thesis 1: There should be no restrictions on the First Amendment. b)    Bad Thesis 2: The government has the right to limit free speech. c)    Better Thesis 1: There should be no restrictions on the First Amendment if those restrictions are intended merely to protect individuals from unspecified or otherwise unquantifiable or unverifiable “emotional distress.” d)    Better Thesis 2: The government has the right to limit free speech in cases of overtly racist or sexist language because our failure to address such abuses would effectively suggest that our society condones such ignorant and hateful views. 3)    The incontestable thesis: A thesis must be arguable. And in order for it to be arguable, it must present a view that someone might reasonably contest. Sometimes a thesis ultimately says, “people should be good,” or “bad things are bad.” Such thesis statements are redundant or so universally accepted that there is no need to prove the point. a)    Bad Thesis 1: Although we have the right to say what we want, we should avoid hurting other people’s feelings. b)    Bad Thesis 2: There are always alternatives to using racist speech. c)    Better Thesis 1: If we can accept that emotional injuries can be just as painful as physical ones we should limit speech that may hurt people’s feelings in ways similar to the way we limit speech that may lead directly to bodily harm. d)    Better Thesis 2: The “fighting words” exception to free speech is not legitimate because it wrongly considers speech as an action. 4)    The “list essay” thesis: A good argumentative thesis provides not only a position on an issue but also suggests the structure of the paper. The thesis should allow the reader to imagine and anticipate the flow of the paper, in which a sequence of points logically proves the essay’s main assertion. A list essay provides no such structure, so that different points and paragraphs appear arbitrary with no logical connection to one another. a)    Bad Thesis 1: There are many reasons we need to limit hate speech. b)    Bad Thesis 2: Some of the arguments in favor of regulating pornography are persuasive. c)    Better Thesis 1: Among the many reasons we need to limit hate speech the most compelling ones all refer to our history of discrimination and prejudice, and it is, ultimately, for the purpose of trying to repair our troubled racial society that we need hate speech legislation. d)    Better Thesis 2: Some of the arguments in favor of regulating pornography are persuasive because they ask pornography proponents to ask themselves whether such a profession would be on a list of professions they would desire for their daughters or mothers. 5)    The research paper thesis: In another course this would be acceptable, and, in fact, possibly even desirable. But in this kind of course, a thesis statement that makes a factual claim that can be verified only with scientific, sociological, psychological, or other kind of experimental evidence is not appropriate. You need to construct a thesis that you are prepared to prove using the tools you have available, without having to consult the world’s leading expert on the issue to provide you with a definitive judgment. a)    Bad Thesis 1: Americans today are not prepared to give up on the concept of free speech. b)    Bad Thesis 2: Hate speech can cause emotional pain and suffering in victims just as intense as physical battery. c)    Better Thesis 1: Whether or not the cultural concept of free speech bears any relation to the reality of 1st amendment legislation and jurisprudence, its continuing social function as a promoter of tolerance and intellectual exchange trumps the call for politicization (according to Fish’s agenda) of the term. d)    Better Thesis 2: The various arguments against the regulation of hate speech depend on the unspoken and unexamined assumption that emotional pain is trivial.

How do I know if my thesis is strong?  If there’s time, run it by a professor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback (http://www.umass.edu/writingcenter/index.html). Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft of your working thesis, ask yourself the following: 1)    Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. 2)    Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument. 3)    Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”? 4)    Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is, “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue. 5)    Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary. 6)    Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Jane M. Smith Honors ____ [Date] Paper Topic Proposal and Thesis Statement Proposed paper topic: [One sentence.] Why the topic is interesting and important: [Two to three paragraphs.] See details above on what is required of this section. Thesis statement: [One sentence.]

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Online Guide to Writing and Research

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• Online Guide to Writing

Writing Arguments

Steps to Writing an Argument

State your thesis or proposition.

In argument, the  thesis  is also called a proposition. Your proposition should do the following:

define your argument’s scope by stating its situation or context; and

make clear what assertion you are going to debate. 

You may “hook” your readers by stating your argument as a question. Because many questions lack a point of view, however, be sure a question leads to a proposition, and that your proposition makes a claim that is open to debate. Your proposition should state something that your readers feel uncertain about and about which you find arguments for both sides of the issue.

Sometimes students have an opinion they intend to address and support. Then, after reviewing information on the topic, they decide that they have to modify or change their opinion. This is all part of the writing process. When you do research, you may find new information or evidence that changes your argument. Your proposition can be modified during the draft stage.

To help you get started at this stage,  brainstorm  and  freewrite  about what you already know about the topic. Asking—and answering—the following questions can get you started on your assignment.

Why is this issue important to me? Why do I want to write about it?

What do I already know about this topic? What do I need to learn about this topic?

Where can I find more information on this subject?

Am I concerned more with the causes of this issue, the effects of this issue, or both?

What other related issues should I examine so that I can address the topic thoroughly?

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Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Developing Strong Thesis Statements

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These OWL resources will help you develop and refine the arguments in your writing.

The thesis statement or main claim must be debatable

An argumentative or persuasive piece of writing must begin with a debatable thesis or claim. In other words, the thesis must be something that people could reasonably have differing opinions on. If your thesis is something that is generally agreed upon or accepted as fact then there is no reason to try to persuade people.

Example of a non-debatable thesis statement:

This thesis statement is not debatable. First, the word pollution implies that something is bad or negative in some way. Furthermore, all studies agree that pollution is a problem; they simply disagree on the impact it will have or the scope of the problem. No one could reasonably argue that pollution is unambiguously good.

Example of a debatable thesis statement:

This is an example of a debatable thesis because reasonable people could disagree with it. Some people might think that this is how we should spend the nation's money. Others might feel that we should be spending more money on education. Still others could argue that corporations, not the government, should be paying to limit pollution.

Another example of a debatable thesis statement:

In this example there is also room for disagreement between rational individuals. Some citizens might think focusing on recycling programs rather than private automobiles is the most effective strategy.

The thesis needs to be narrow

Although the scope of your paper might seem overwhelming at the start, generally the narrower the thesis the more effective your argument will be. Your thesis or claim must be supported by evidence. The broader your claim is, the more evidence you will need to convince readers that your position is right.

Example of a thesis that is too broad:

There are several reasons this statement is too broad to argue. First, what is included in the category "drugs"? Is the author talking about illegal drug use, recreational drug use (which might include alcohol and cigarettes), or all uses of medication in general? Second, in what ways are drugs detrimental? Is drug use causing deaths (and is the author equating deaths from overdoses and deaths from drug related violence)? Is drug use changing the moral climate or causing the economy to decline? Finally, what does the author mean by "society"? Is the author referring only to America or to the global population? Does the author make any distinction between the effects on children and adults? There are just too many questions that the claim leaves open. The author could not cover all of the topics listed above, yet the generality of the claim leaves all of these possibilities open to debate.

Example of a narrow or focused thesis:

In this example the topic of drugs has been narrowed down to illegal drugs and the detriment has been narrowed down to gang violence. This is a much more manageable topic.

We could narrow each debatable thesis from the previous examples in the following way:

Narrowed debatable thesis 1:

This thesis narrows the scope of the argument by specifying not just the amount of money used but also how the money could actually help to control pollution.

Narrowed debatable thesis 2:

This thesis narrows the scope of the argument by specifying not just what the focus of a national anti-pollution campaign should be but also why this is the appropriate focus.

Qualifiers such as " typically ," " generally ," " usually ," or " on average " also help to limit the scope of your claim by allowing for the almost inevitable exception to the rule.

Types of claims

Claims typically fall into one of four categories. Thinking about how you want to approach your topic, or, in other words, what type of claim you want to make, is one way to focus your thesis on one particular aspect of your broader topic.

Claims of fact or definition: These claims argue about what the definition of something is or whether something is a settled fact. Example:

Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that one person, thing, or event caused another thing or event to occur. Example:

Claims about value: These are claims made of what something is worth, whether we value it or not, how we would rate or categorize something. Example:

Claims about solutions or policies: These are claims that argue for or against a certain solution or policy approach to a problem. Example:

Which type of claim is right for your argument? Which type of thesis or claim you use for your argument will depend on your position and knowledge of the topic, your audience, and the context of your paper. You might want to think about where you imagine your audience to be on this topic and pinpoint where you think the biggest difference in viewpoints might be. Even if you start with one type of claim you probably will be using several within the paper. Regardless of the type of claim you choose to utilize it is key to identify the controversy or debate you are addressing and to define your position early on in the paper.

• Thesis Formulation
• Understanding the Assignment
• Need a Topic?
• Evaluating Sources
• Brainstorming Strategies
• Drafting Strategies

Formulating a Thesis

Other resources on thesis formation, writing activity for thesis formation.

• Introductions
• Conclusions
• Show Don't Tell
• Expand Your Draft
• Flow & Lexical Coherence
• Revision Checklist
• Introduction to Style and Grammar
• Apostrophes
• Article Usage for ESL Learners
• Capitalization
• Clarity: Get Rid of Nominalizations
• Cohesion: Does my Paragraph Flow?
• Commas and Colons
• Conciseness
• Confusing Words
• Parallel Structure
• Passive Voice
• Quotation Marks
• Run-on Sentences
• Subject-Verb Agreement
• Writing Mechanics
• Other Styles
• Art History This link opens in a new window
• Programming Lab Reports
• Scientific Lab Reports
• Screenwriting
• Publication Opportunities
• Meet with a Tutor This link opens in a new window

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Introduction

In an argumentative paper, your thesis statement expresses what it is that you want to prove and, ultimately, what you will support with the main arguments in your body paragraphs. Any good thesis statement will:

• have a clearly established topic ,
• make a claim that answers a question about that topic,
• have a reason that supports the claim, and
• be specific .

The general model of your thesis statement will look something like this:

Deciding on a Topic

Ideally, you should write about something that you care about or at least that you have an opinion about. But let’s be honest, we don’t find interest in every subject we come across. If you find yourself in this situation, pick a topic that is controversial ; that people don’t see eye to eye on. Picking a topic like this means that you will grab the reader’s attention and establish a clear sense of direction.

Formulating the Question

For argumentative papers, your thesis statement should be an assertive proposition; somebody should be able to either agree or disagree with it. One way to ensure that you’ll come out with an assertive thesis statement is to ask yourself a “yes” or “no” question about your topic.

Answering the Question

Now that you’ve formulated the question, you have to take a side. If you already feel strongly about something, run with it. If you don’t feel particularly compelled to either side of an argument, don’t worry. You should take some comfort knowing that because there is often times a lot of grey area, there are a lot of interesting points that can be made for either side. If you run into this problem, take a chance and see where it takes you . After answering “yes” or “no” you need to shape your response into a claim and then support it with a reason .

Specificity

Teachers will tell you that your thesis statement needs to be specific but this is a very subjective and sometimes unhelpful instruction. And so because it’s not altogether easy to define, perhaps the better question is, “How do I make my thesis specific?” To a large extent, making your thesis specific will depend upon how much reading and studying you’ve done on the topic. The more you read and understand the subject matter, the more precise and detailed questions you’ll be capable of asking.

Nonetheless, it’s important that you consult your professor or a tutor on this. Sometimes, we may feel that our subject is adequately narrow but a second set of eyes will help to sheer away some of the excess. Don’t be ashamed of asking for help and don’t be afraid of rejecting your old ideas for new ones. In the end, you’ll find that working in dialogue with others can really improve your writing skills.

Let’s say you’re taking a psychology class and you decide to write on the subject of Freud. Let’s go through the steps.

• Decide on a topic – Freud as an individual, of course, is much too broad of a topic and not controversial so maybe we could pick one of his ideas, like his theory of the unconscious .
• Formulate a question – Freud’s theory about the unconscious is a subject of great controversy in the field of psychology. Many believe that the idea of repression tied up with the notion of the unconscious fails to account for mental illness as Freud thought it did. Thus, the unconscious’s relation to mental illness is something we can formulate into a question: Does the unconscious adequately account for mental illness?
• Answer the Question – In our research, we may find ultimately that we agree with Freud’s detractors. Some would say that Freud’s theory doesn’t adequately account for mental illness because it fails to take into account that some conditions are not caused by repression of the unconscious but by chemical imbalances in the brain. So ultimately, we will answer “no,” to our question. And, as stated above, when we answer the question, we don’t want to return with just a “yes” or “no” but to provide the sense in which we’re disagreeing (i.e. Freud’s theory fails in accounting for mental illness) and then providing a reason (i.e. because it fails to account for biologically based mental illnesses). Put all together: No, Freud’s theory fails in accounting for mental illness because it doesn’t account for conditions that have a biological basis.

Now we have all the raw materials for our thesis statement. If I use the structure at the beginning and piece everything together (topic, claim, reason), I get the following:

Freud’s theory of the unconscious is inadequate in accounting for mental illness because it fails to account for conditions that are of a strictly biological origin.

Now, we have a thesis! Of course, you don’t have to stop there. You may find in more reading and studying that you want to make your statement even more specific. Writing is a process and one that isn’t always linear (in fact, it rarely is). This means that you’ll probably go back to redefine your thesis statement a few times and that’s okay! Best of luck!

Examples Often times, it’s difficult to take abstract directions and strategies such as those listed above and apply them to your specific subject area. For that reason, we’ve provided a series of sample thesis statements showing how these strategies can be applied at a more specific level.

Art History Panofsky and his followers’ interpretation of van Eyck’s double portrait is a misunderstanding of the overall artistic intent of the piece. The painting is not a celebration of the sacrament of marriage but rather that of an alliance between two rich and important Italian merchant families with all the financial and social benefits that might be expected to accrue therefrom. (Edwin Hall)

Film Ridley Scott’s film  Blade Runner  cannot be labeled science fiction because the designation fails to consider the full scope of the film’s structure and style as postmodern film noir. (Online)

History The Russian Revolution of 1917 cannot be labeled an authentic Marxist revolution. Despite widespread worker discontent, the organization of the revolution by Lenin’s “vanguard” was premature, foregoing the development of working class consciousness, an essential step in Marx’s overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

Philosophy Immanuel Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative is inadequate as an ethical theory insofar as it only accounts for an individual’s intentions behind their actions, not the lived consequences of the actions themselves.

Theology The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith is a dangerous precedent in the state’s attitude toward religious practice. In denying the defendants their unemployment benefits by virtue of their ceremonial ingestion of peyote, they emaciate the value of religious freedom, strictly confining it to the private sphere. (Thomas Powers)

• Thesis Formulation (Printable)
• Stasis Questions (Printable)
• Purdue's Guide to Thesis Statements
• UNC-Chapel Hill Intro to Library Research Consists of a series of self-paced instructional modules designed to introduce students to important research concepts and to guide them in the use of the UNC Libraries.

After reading the above information on outlining, attempt the writing activity below for further practice. 

• Writing Activity: Formulating a Thesis
• Thesis Formulation Writing Activity Answers
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• Next: Introductions >>
• Last Updated: Mar 14, 2024 12:00 PM
• URL: https://libguides.lmu.edu/writing

HOW TO WRITE A THESIS: Steps by step guide

Introduction

In the academic world, one of the hallmark rites signifying mastery of a course or academic area is the writing of a thesis . Essentially a thesis is a typewritten work, usually 50 to 350 pages in length depending on institutions, discipline, and educational level which is often aimed at addressing a particular problem in a given field.

While a thesis is inadequate to address all the problems in a given field, it is succinct enough to address a specialized aspect of the problem by taking a stance or making a claim on what the resolution of the problem should be. Writing a thesis can be a very daunting task because most times it is the first complex research undertaking for the student. The lack of research and writing skills to write a thesis coupled with fear and a limited time frame are factors that makes the writing of a thesis daunting. However, commitment to excellence on the part of the student combined with some of the techniques and methods that will be discussed below gives a fair chance that the student will be able to deliver an excellent thesis regardless of the subject area, the depth of the research specialization and the daunting amount of materials that must be comprehended(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

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What is a thesis?

A thesis is a statement, theory, argument, proposal or proposition, which is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved. It explains the stand someone takes on an issue and how the person intends to justify the stand. It is always better to pick a topic that will be able to render professional help, a topic that you will be happy to talk about with anybody, a topic you have personal interest and passion for, because when writing a thesis gets frustrating personal interest, happiness and passion coupled with the professional help it will be easier to write a great thesis (see you through the thesis). One has to source for a lot of information concerning the topic one is writing a thesis on in order to know the important question, because for you to take a good stand on an issue you have to study the evidence first.

Qualities of a good thesis

A good thesis has the following qualities

• A good thesis must solve an existing problem in the society, organisation, government among others.
• A good thesis should be contestable, it should propose a point that is arguable which people can agree with or disagree.
• It is specific, clear and focused.
•   A good thesis does not use general terms and abstractions.  
• The claims of a good thesis should be definable and arguable.
• It anticipates the counter-argument s
• It does not use unclear language
• It avoids the first person. (“In my opinion”)
• A strong thesis should be able to take a stand and not just taking a stand but should be able to justify the stand that is taken, so that the reader will be tempted to ask questions like how or why.
• The thesis should be arguable, contestable, focused, specific, and clear. Make your thesis clear, strong and easy to find.
• The conclusion of a thesis should be based on evidence.

Steps in writing a Thesis

• First, think about good topics and theories that you can write before writing the thesis, then pick a topic. The topic or thesis statement is derived from a review of existing literature in the area of study that the researcher wants to explore. This route is taken when the unknowns in an area of study are not yet defined. Some areas of study have existing problems yearning to be solved and the drafting of the thesis topic or statement revolves around a selection of one of these problems.
• Once you have a good thesis, put it down and draw an outline . The outline is like a map of the whole thesis and it covers more commonly the introduction, literature review, discussion of methodology, discussion of results and the thesis’ conclusions and recommendations. The outline might differ from one institution to another but the one described in the preceding sentence is what is more commonly obtainable. It is imperative at this point to note that the outline drew still requires other mini- outlines for each of the sections mentioned. The outlines and mini- outlines provide a graphical over- view of the whole project and can also be used in allocating the word- count for each section and sub- section based on the overall word- count requirement of the thesis(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).
• Literature search. Remember to draw a good outline you need to do literature search to familiarize yourself with the concepts and the works of others. Similarly, to achieve this, you need to read as much material that contains necessary information as you can. There will always be a counter argument for everything so anticipate it because it will help shape your thesis. Read everything you can–academic research, trade literature, and information in the popular press and on the Internet(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).
• After getting all the information you need, the knowledge you gathered should help in suggesting the aim of your thesis.

Remember; a thesis is not supposed to be a question or a list, thesis should specific and as clear as possible. The claims of a thesis should be definable and also arguable.

• Then collecting and analyzing data, after data analysis, the result of the analysis should be written and discussed, followed by summary, conclusion, recommendations, list of references and the appendices
• The last step is editing of the thesis and proper spell checking.

Structure of a Thesis

A conventional thesis has five chapters – chapter 1-5 which will be discussed in detail below. However, it is important to state that a thesis is not limited to any chapter or section as the case may be. In fact, a thesis can be five, six, seven or even eight chapters.  What determines the number of chapters in a thesis includes institution rules/ guideline, researcher choice, supervisor choice, programme or educational level. In fact, most PhD thesis are usually more than 5 chapters(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

Preliminaries Pages: The preliminaries are the cover page, the title page, the table of contents page, and the abstract.

The introduction: The introduction is the first section and it provides as the name implies an introduction to the thesis. The introduction contains such aspects as the background to the study which provides information on the topic in the context of what is happening in the world as related to the topic. It also discusses the relevance of the topic to society, policies formulated success and failure. The introduction also contains the statement of the problem which is essentially a succinct description of the problem that the thesis want to solve and what the trend will be if the problem is not solved. The concluding part of the statement of problem ends with an outline of the research questions. These are the questions which when answered helps in achieving the aim of the thesis. The third section is the outline of research objectives. Conventionally research objectives re a conversion the research questions into an active statement form. Other parts of the introduction are a discussion of hypotheses (if any), the significance of the study, delimitations, proposed methodology and a discussion of the structure of the study(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

The main body includes the following; the literature review, methodology, research results and discussion of the result, the summary, conclusion and recommendations, the list of references and the appendices.

The literature review : The literature review is often the most voluminous aspects of a thesis because it reviews past empirical and theoretical literature about the problem being studied. This section starts by discussing the concepts relevant to the problem as indicated in the topic, the relationship between the concepts and what discoveries have being made on topic based on the choice of methodologies. The validity of the studies reviewed are questioned and findings are compared in order to get a comprehensive picture of the problem. The literature review also discusses the theories and theoretical frameworks that are relevant to the problem, the gaps that are evident in literature and how the thesis being written helps in resolving some of the gaps.

The major importance of Literature review is that it specifies the gap in the existing knowledge (gap in literature). The source of the literature that is being reviewed should be specified. For instance; ‘It has been argued that if the rural youth are to be aware of their community development role they need to be educated’ Effiong, (1992). The author’s name can be at the beginning, end or in between the literature. The literature should be discussed and not just stated (RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

The methodology: The third section is a discussion of the research methodology adopted in the thesis and touches on aspects such as the research design, the area, population and sample that will be considered for the study as well as the sampling procedure. These aspects are discussed in terms of choice, method and rationale. This section also covers the sub- section of data collection, data analysis and measures of ensuring validity of study. It is the chapter 3. This chapter explains the method used in data collection and data analysis. It explains the methodology adopted and why it is the best method to be used, it also explains every step of data collection and analysis. The data used could be primary data or secondary data. While analysing the data, proper statistical tool should be used in order to fit the stated objectives of the thesis. The statistical tool could be; the spearman rank order correlation, chi square, analysis of variance (ANOVA) etc (RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

The findings and discussion of result : The next section is a discussion of findings based on the data collection instrumentation used and the objectives or hypotheses of study if any. It is the chapter 4. It is research results. This is the part that describes the research. It shows the result gotten from data that is collected and analysed. It discusses the result and how it relates to your profession.

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation: This is normally the chapter 5. The last section discusses the summary of the study and the conclusions arrived at based on the findings discussed in the previous section. This section also presents any policy recommendations that the researcher wants to propose (RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

References: It cite all ideas, concepts, text, data that are not your own. It is acceptable to put the initials of the individual authors behind their last names. The way single author is referenced is different from the way more than one author is referenced (RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).

The appendices; it includes all data in the appendix. Reference data or materials that is not easily available. It includes tables and calculations, List of equipment used for an experiment or details of complicated procedures. If a large number of references are consulted but all are not cited, it may also be included in the appendix. The appendices also contain supportive or complementary information like the questionnaire, the interview schedule, tables and charts while the references section contain an ordered list of all literature, academic and contemporary cited in the thesis. Different schools have their own preferred referencing styles(RE: write a thesis or writing a thesis).   

Follow the following steps to achieve successful thesis writing

Start writing early. Do not delay writing until you have finished your project or research. Write complete and concise “Technical Reports” as and when you finish each nugget of work. This way, you will remember everything you did and document it accurately, when the work is still fresh in your mind. This is especially so if your work involves programming.

Spot errors early. A well-written “Technical Report” will force you to think about what you have done, before you move on to something else. If anything is amiss, you will detect it at once and can easily correct it, rather than have to re-visit the work later, when you may be pressured for time and have lost touch with it.

Write your thesis from the inside out. Begin with the chapters on your own experimental work. You will develop confidence in writing them because you know your own work better than anyone else. Once you have overcome the initial inertia, move on to the other chapters.

End with a bang, not a whimper. First things first, and save the best for last. First and last impressions persist. Arrange your chapters so that your first and last experimental chapters are sound and solid.

Write the Introduction after writing the Conclusions. The examiner will read the Introduction first, and then the Conclusions, to see if the promises made in the former are indeed fulfilled in the latter. Ensure that your introduction and Conclusions match.

“No man is an Island”. The critical review of the literature places your work in context. Usually, one third of the PhD thesis is about others’ work; two thirds, what you have done yourself. After a thorough and critical literature review, the PhD candidate must be able to identify the major researchers in the field and make a sound proposal for doctoral research. Estimate the time to write your thesis and then multiply it by three to get the correct estimate. Writing at one stretch is very demanding and it is all too easy to underestimate the time required for it; inflating your first estimate by a factor of three is more realistic.

Punctuating your thesis

Punctuation Good punctuation makes reading easy. The simplest way to find out where to punctuate is to read aloud what you have written. Each time you pause, you should add a punctuation symbol. There are four major pause symbols, arranged below in ascending order of “degree of pause”:

• Comma. Use the comma to indicate a short pause or to separate items in a list. A pair of commas may delimit the beginning and end of a subordinate clause or phrase. Sometimes, this is also done with a pair of “em dashes” which are printed like this:
• Semi-colon. The semi-colon signifies a longer pause than the comma. It separates segments of a sentence that are “further apart” in position, or meaning, but which are nevertheless related. If the ideas were “closer together”, a comma would have been used. It is also used to separate two clauses that may stand on their own but which are too closely related for a colon or full stop to intervene between them.
• Colon. The colon is used before one or more examples of a concept, and whenever items are to be listed in a visually separate fashion. The sentence that introduced the itemized list you are now reading ended in a colon. It may also be used to separate two fairly—but not totally—independent clauses in a sentence.
• Full stop or period. The full stop ends a sentence. If the sentence embodies a question or an exclamation, then, of course, it is ended with a question mark or exclamation mark, respectively. The full stop is also used to terminate abbreviations like etc., (for et cetera), e.g., (for exempli gratia), et al., (for et alia) etc., but not with abbreviations for SI units. The readability of your writing will improve greatly if you take the trouble to learn the basic rules of punctuation given above.

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11.2 Persuasive Speaking

Learning objectives.

• Explain how claims, evidence, and warrants function to create an argument.
• Identify strategies for choosing a persuasive speech topic.
• Identify strategies for adapting a persuasive speech based on an audience’s orientation to the proposition.
• Distinguish among propositions of fact, value, and policy.
• Choose an organizational pattern that is fitting for a persuasive speech topic.

We produce and receive persuasive messages daily, but we don’t often stop to think about how we make the arguments we do or the quality of the arguments that we receive. In this section, we’ll learn the components of an argument, how to choose a good persuasive speech topic, and how to adapt and organize a persuasive message.

Foundation of Persuasion

Persuasive speaking seeks to influence the beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviors of audience members. In order to persuade, a speaker has to construct arguments that appeal to audience members. Arguments form around three components: claim, evidence, and warrant. The claim is the statement that will be supported by evidence. Your thesis statement is the overarching claim for your speech, but you will make other claims within the speech to support the larger thesis. Evidence , also called grounds, supports the claim. The main points of your persuasive speech and the supporting material you include serve as evidence. For example, a speaker may make the following claim: “There should be a national law against texting while driving.” The speaker could then support the claim by providing the following evidence: “Research from the US Department of Transportation has found that texting while driving creates a crash risk that is twenty-three times worse than driving while not distracted.” The warrant is the underlying justification that connects the claim and the evidence. One warrant for the claim and evidence cited in this example is that the US Department of Transportation is an institution that funds research conducted by credible experts. An additional and more implicit warrant is that people shouldn’t do things they know are unsafe.

Figure 11.2 Components of an Argument

The quality of your evidence often impacts the strength of your warrant, and some warrants are stronger than others. A speaker could also provide evidence to support their claim advocating for a national ban on texting and driving by saying, “I have personally seen people almost wreck while trying to text.” While this type of evidence can also be persuasive, it provides a different type and strength of warrant since it is based on personal experience. In general, the anecdotal evidence from personal experience would be given a weaker warrant than the evidence from the national research report. The same process works in our legal system when a judge evaluates the connection between a claim and evidence. If someone steals my car, I could say to the police, “I’m pretty sure Mario did it because when I said hi to him on campus the other day, he didn’t say hi back, which proves he’s mad at me.” A judge faced with that evidence is unlikely to issue a warrant for Mario’s arrest. Fingerprint evidence from the steering wheel that has been matched with a suspect is much more likely to warrant arrest.

As you put together a persuasive argument, you act as the judge. You can evaluate arguments that you come across in your research by analyzing the connection (the warrant) between the claim and the evidence. If the warrant is strong, you may want to highlight that argument in your speech. You may also be able to point out a weak warrant in an argument that goes against your position, which you could then include in your speech. Every argument starts by putting together a claim and evidence, but arguments grow to include many interrelated units.

Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

As with any speech, topic selection is important and is influenced by many factors. Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial, and have important implications for society. If your topic is currently being discussed on television, in newspapers, in the lounges in your dorm, or around your family’s dinner table, then it’s a current topic. A persuasive speech aimed at getting audience members to wear seat belts in cars wouldn’t have much current relevance, given that statistics consistently show that most people wear seat belts. Giving the same speech would have been much more timely in the 1970s when there was a huge movement to increase seat-belt use.

Many topics that are current are also controversial, which is what gets them attention by the media and citizens. Current and controversial topics will be more engaging for your audience. A persuasive speech to encourage audience members to donate blood or recycle wouldn’t be very controversial, since the benefits of both practices are widely agreed on. However, arguing that the restrictions on blood donation by men who have had sexual relations with men be lifted would be controversial. I must caution here that controversial is not the same as inflammatory. An inflammatory topic is one that evokes strong reactions from an audience for the sake of provoking a reaction. Being provocative for no good reason or choosing a topic that is extremist will damage your credibility and prevent you from achieving your speech goals.

You should also choose a topic that is important to you and to society as a whole. As we have already discussed in this book, our voices are powerful, as it is through communication that we participate and make change in society. Therefore we should take seriously opportunities to use our voices to speak publicly. Choosing a speech topic that has implications for society is probably a better application of your public speaking skills than choosing to persuade the audience that Lebron James is the best basketball player in the world or that Superman is a better hero than Spiderman. Although those topics may be very important to you, they don’t carry the same social weight as many other topics you could choose to discuss. Remember that speakers have ethical obligations to the audience and should take the opportunity to speak seriously.

You will also want to choose a topic that connects to your own interests and passions. If you are an education major, it might make more sense to do a persuasive speech about funding for public education than the death penalty. If there are hot-button issues for you that make you get fired up and veins bulge out in your neck, then it may be a good idea to avoid those when speaking in an academic or professional context.

Choose a persuasive speech topic that you’re passionate about but still able to approach and deliver in an ethical manner.

Michael Vadon – Nigel Farage – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Choosing such topics may interfere with your ability to deliver a speech in a competent and ethical manner. You want to care about your topic, but you also want to be able to approach it in a way that’s going to make people want to listen to you. Most people tune out speakers they perceive to be too ideologically entrenched and write them off as extremists or zealots.

You also want to ensure that your topic is actually persuasive. Draft your thesis statement as an “I believe” statement so your stance on an issue is clear. Also, think of your main points as reasons to support your thesis. Students end up with speeches that aren’t very persuasive in nature if they don’t think of their main points as reasons. Identifying arguments that counter your thesis is also a good exercise to help ensure your topic is persuasive. If you can clearly and easily identify a competing thesis statement and supporting reasons, then your topic and approach are arguable.

Review of Tips for Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

• Not current. People should use seat belts.
• Current. People should not text while driving.
• Not controversial. People should recycle.
• Controversial. Recycling should be mandatory by law.
• Not as impactful. Superman is the best superhero.
• Impactful. Colleges and universities should adopt zero-tolerance bullying policies.
• Unclear thesis. Homeschooling is common in the United States.
• Clear, argumentative thesis with stance. Homeschooling does not provide the same benefits of traditional education and should be strictly monitored and limited.

Adapting Persuasive Messages

Competent speakers should consider their audience throughout the speech-making process. Given that persuasive messages seek to directly influence the audience in some way, audience adaptation becomes even more important. If possible, poll your audience to find out their orientation toward your thesis. I read my students’ thesis statements aloud and have the class indicate whether they agree with, disagree with, or are neutral in regards to the proposition. It is unlikely that you will have a homogenous audience, meaning that there will probably be some who agree, some who disagree, and some who are neutral. So you may employ all of the following strategies, in varying degrees, in your persuasive speech.

When you have audience members who already agree with your proposition, you should focus on intensifying their agreement. You can also assume that they have foundational background knowledge of the topic, which means you can take the time to inform them about lesser-known aspects of a topic or cause to further reinforce their agreement. Rather than move these audience members from disagreement to agreement, you can focus on moving them from agreement to action. Remember, calls to action should be as specific as possible to help you capitalize on audience members’ motivation in the moment so they are more likely to follow through on the action.

There are two main reasons audience members may be neutral in regards to your topic: (1) they are uninformed about the topic or (2) they do not think the topic affects them. In this case, you should focus on instilling a concern for the topic. Uninformed audiences may need background information before they can decide if they agree or disagree with your proposition. If the issue is familiar but audience members are neutral because they don’t see how the topic affects them, focus on getting the audience’s attention and demonstrating relevance. Remember that concrete and proxemic supporting materials will help an audience find relevance in a topic. Students who pick narrow or unfamiliar topics will have to work harder to persuade their audience, but neutral audiences often provide the most chance of achieving your speech goal since even a small change may move them into agreement.

When audience members disagree with your proposition, you should focus on changing their minds. To effectively persuade, you must be seen as a credible speaker. When an audience is hostile to your proposition, establishing credibility is even more important, as audience members may be quick to discount or discredit someone who doesn’t appear prepared or doesn’t present well-researched and supported information. Don’t give an audience a chance to write you off before you even get to share your best evidence. When facing a disagreeable audience, the goal should also be small change. You may not be able to switch someone’s position completely, but influencing him or her is still a success. Aside from establishing your credibility, you should also establish common ground with an audience.

Build common ground with disagreeable audiences and acknowledge areas of disagreement.

Chris-Havard Berge – Shaking Hands – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Acknowledging areas of disagreement and logically refuting counterarguments in your speech is also a way to approach persuading an audience in disagreement, as it shows that you are open-minded enough to engage with other perspectives.

Determining Your Proposition

The proposition of your speech is the overall direction of the content and how that relates to the speech goal. A persuasive speech will fall primarily into one of three categories: propositions of fact, value, or policy. A speech may have elements of any of the three propositions, but you can usually determine the overall proposition of a speech from the specific purpose and thesis statements.

Propositions of fact focus on beliefs and try to establish that something “is or isn’t.” Propositions of value focus on persuading audience members that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.” Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done. Since most persuasive speech topics can be approached as propositions of fact, value, or policy, it is a good idea to start thinking about what kind of proposition you want to make, as it will influence how you go about your research and writing. As you can see in the following example using the topic of global warming, the type of proposition changes the types of supporting materials you would need:

• Proposition of fact. Global warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases related to human activity.
• Proposition of value. America’s disproportionately large amount of pollution relative to other countries is wrong .
• Proposition of policy. There should be stricter emission restrictions on individual cars.

To support propositions of fact, you would want to present a logical argument based on objective facts that can then be used to build persuasive arguments. Propositions of value may require you to appeal more to your audience’s emotions and cite expert and lay testimony. Persuasive speeches about policy usually require you to research existing and previous laws or procedures and determine if any relevant legislation or propositions are currently being considered.

“Getting Critical”

Persuasion and Masculinity

The traditional view of rhetoric that started in ancient Greece and still informs much of our views on persuasion today has been critiqued for containing Western and masculine biases. Traditional persuasion has been linked to Western and masculine values of domination, competition, and change, which have been critiqued as coercive and violent (Gearhart, 1979).

Communication scholars proposed an alternative to traditional persuasive rhetoric in the form of invitational rhetoric. Invitational rhetoric differs from a traditional view of persuasive rhetoric that “attempts to win over an opponent, or to advocate the correctness of a single position in a very complex issue” (Bone et al., 2008). Instead, invitational rhetoric proposes a model of reaching consensus through dialogue. The goal is to create a climate in which growth and change can occur but isn’t required for one person to “win” an argument over another. Each person in a communication situation is acknowledged to have a standpoint that is valid but can still be influenced through the offering of alternative perspectives and the invitation to engage with and discuss these standpoints (Ryan & Natalle, 2001). Safety, value, and freedom are three important parts of invitational rhetoric. Safety involves a feeling of security in which audience members and speakers feel like their ideas and contributions will not be denigrated. Value refers to the notion that each person in a communication encounter is worthy of recognition and that people are willing to step outside their own perspectives to better understand others. Last, freedom is present in communication when communicators do not limit the thinking or decisions of others, allowing all participants to speak up (Bone et al., 2008).

Invitational rhetoric doesn’t claim that all persuasive rhetoric is violent. Instead, it acknowledges that some persuasion is violent and that the connection between persuasion and violence is worth exploring. Invitational rhetoric has the potential to contribute to the civility of communication in our society. When we are civil, we are capable of engaging with and appreciating different perspectives while still understanding our own. People aren’t attacked or reviled because their views diverge from ours. Rather than reducing the world to “us against them, black or white, and right or wrong,” invitational rhetoric encourages us to acknowledge human perspectives in all their complexity (Bone et al., 2008).

• What is your reaction to the claim that persuasion includes Western and masculine biases?
• What are some strengths and weaknesses of the proposed alternatives to traditional persuasion?
• In what situations might an invitational approach to persuasion be useful? In what situations might you want to rely on traditional models of persuasion?

Organizing a Persuasive Speech

We have already discussed several patterns for organizing your speech, but some organization strategies are specific to persuasive speaking. Some persuasive speech topics lend themselves to a topical organization pattern, which breaks the larger topic up into logical divisions. Earlier, in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , we discussed recency and primacy, and in this chapter we discussed adapting a persuasive speech based on the audience’s orientation toward the proposition. These concepts can be connected when organizing a persuasive speech topically. Primacy means putting your strongest information first and is based on the idea that audience members put more weight on what they hear first. This strategy can be especially useful when addressing an audience that disagrees with your proposition, as you can try to win them over early. Recency means putting your strongest information last to leave a powerful impression. This can be useful when you are building to a climax in your speech, specifically if you include a call to action.

Putting your strongest argument last can help motivate an audience to action.

Celestine Chua – The Change – CC BY 2.0.

The problem-solution pattern is an organizational pattern that advocates for a particular approach to solve a problem. You would provide evidence to show that a problem exists and then propose a solution with additional evidence or reasoning to justify the course of action. One main point addressing the problem and one main point addressing the solution may be sufficient, but you are not limited to two. You could add a main point between the problem and solution that outlines other solutions that have failed. You can also combine the problem-solution pattern with the cause-effect pattern or expand the speech to fit with Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.

As was mentioned in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , the cause-effect pattern can be used for informative speaking when the relationship between the cause and effect is not contested. The pattern is more fitting for persuasive speeches when the relationship between the cause and effect is controversial or unclear. There are several ways to use causes and effects to structure a speech. You could have a two-point speech that argues from cause to effect or from effect to cause. You could also have more than one cause that lead to the same effect or a single cause that leads to multiple effects. The following are some examples of thesis statements that correspond to various organizational patterns. As you can see, the same general topic area, prison overcrowding, is used for each example. This illustrates the importance of considering your organizational options early in the speech-making process, since the pattern you choose will influence your researching and writing.

Persuasive Speech Thesis Statements by Organizational Pattern

• Problem-solution. Prison overcrowding is a serious problem that we can solve by finding alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.
• Problem–failed solution–proposed solution. Prison overcrowding is a serious problem that shouldn’t be solved by building more prisons; instead, we should support alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.
• Cause-effect. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-cause-effect. State budgets are being slashed and prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-effect-effect. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to increased behavioral problems among inmates and lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-effect-solution. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals; therefore we need to find alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is an organizational pattern designed for persuasive speaking that appeals to audience members’ needs and motivates them to action. If your persuasive speaking goals include a call to action, you may want to consider this organizational pattern. We already learned about the five steps of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , but we will review them here with an example:

• Hook the audience by making the topic relevant to them.
• Imagine living a full life, retiring, and slipping into your golden years. As you get older you become more dependent on others and move into an assisted-living facility. Although you think life will be easier, things get worse as you experience abuse and mistreatment from the staff. You report the abuse to a nurse and wait, but nothing happens and the abuse continues. Elder abuse is a common occurrence, and unlike child abuse, there are no laws in our state that mandate complaints of elder abuse be reported or investigated.
• Cite evidence to support the fact that the issue needs to be addressed.
• According to the American Psychological Association, one to two million elderly US Americans have been abused by their caretakers. In our state, those in the medical, psychiatric, and social work field are required to report suspicion of child abuse but are not mandated to report suspicions of elder abuse.
• Offer a solution and persuade the audience that it is feasible and well thought out.
• There should be a federal law mandating that suspicion of elder abuse be reported and that all claims of elder abuse be investigated.
• Take the audience beyond your solution and help them visualize the positive results of implementing it or the negative consequences of not.
• Elderly people should not have to live in fear during their golden years. A mandatory reporting law for elderly abuse will help ensure that the voices of our elderly loved ones will be heard.
• Call your audience to action by giving them concrete steps to follow to engage in a particular action or to change a thought or behavior.
• I urge you to take action in two ways. First, raise awareness about this issue by talking to your own friends and family. Second, contact your representatives at the state and national level to let them know that elder abuse should be taken seriously and given the same level of importance as other forms of abuse. I brought cards with the contact information for our state and national representatives for this area. Please take one at the end of my speech. A short e-mail or phone call can help end the silence surrounding elder abuse.

Key Takeaways

• Arguments are formed by making claims that are supported by evidence. The underlying justification that connects the claim and evidence is the warrant. Arguments can have strong or weak warrants, which will make them more or less persuasive.
• Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial (but not inflammatory), and important to the speaker and society.
• When audience members agree with the proposal, focus on intensifying their agreement and moving them to action.
• When audience members are neutral in regards to the proposition, provide background information to better inform them about the issue and present information that demonstrates the relevance of the topic to the audience.
• When audience members disagree with the proposal, focus on establishing your credibility, build common ground with the audience, and incorporate counterarguments and refute them.
• Propositions of fact focus on establishing that something “is or isn’t” or is “true or false.”
• Propositions of value focus on persuading an audience that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.”
• Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done.
• Persuasive speeches can be organized using the following patterns: problem-solution, cause-effect, cause-effect-solution, or Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.
• Getting integrated: Give an example of persuasive messages that you might need to create in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic. Then do the same thing for persuasive messages you may receive.
• To help ensure that your persuasive speech topic is persuasive and not informative, identify the claims, evidence, and warrants you may use in your argument. In addition, write a thesis statement that refutes your topic idea and identify evidence and warrants that could support that counterargument.
• Determine if your speech is primarily a proposition of fact, value, or policy. How can you tell? Identify an organizational pattern that you think will work well for your speech topic, draft one sentence for each of your main points, and arrange them according to the pattern you chose.

Bone, J. E., Cindy L. Griffin, and T. M. Linda Scholz, “Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move toward Civility,” Western Journal of Communication 72 (2008): 436.

Gearhart, S. M., “The Womanization of Rhetoric,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2 (1979): 195–201.

Ryan, K. J., and Elizabeth J. Natalle, “Fusing Horizons: Standpoint Hermenutics and Invitational Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31 (2001): 69–90.

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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2.1: Persuasive Thinking

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Learning Objectives

• Explain how claims, evidence, and warrants function to create an argument.
• Identify strategies for choosing a persuasive speech topic.
• Identify strategies for adapting a persuasive speech based on an audience’s orientation to the proposition.
• Distinguish among propositions of fact, value, and policy.
• Choose an organizational pattern that is fitting for a persuasive speech topic.

Persuasive Thinking and Speaking

We produce and receive persuasive messages daily, but we don’t often stop to think about how we make the arguments we do or the quality of the arguments that we receive. In this section, we’ll learn the components of an argument, how to choose a good persuasive speech topic, and how to adapt and organize a persuasive message.

Foundation of Persuasion

Persuasive speaking seeks to influence the beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviors of audience members. In order to persuade, a speaker has to construct arguments that appeal to audience members. Arguments form around three components: claim, evidence, and warrant. The claim is the statement that will be supported by evidence. Your thesis statement is the overarching claim for your speech, but you will make other claims within the speech to support the larger thesis. Evidence, also called grounds, supports the claim. The main points of your persuasive speech and the supporting material you include serve as evidence. For example, a speaker may make the following claim: “There should be a national law against texting while driving.” The speaker could then support the claim by providing the following evidence: “Research from the US Department of Transportation has found that texting while driving creates a crash risk that is twenty-three times worse than driving while not distracted.” The warrant is the underlying justification that connects the claim and the evidence. One warrant for the claim and evidence cited in this example is that the US Department of Transportation is an institution that funds research conducted by credible experts. An additional and more implicit warrant is that people shouldn’t do things they know are unsafe.

The quality of your evidence often impacts the strength of your warrant, and some warrants are stronger than others. A speaker could also provide evidence to support their claim advocating for a national ban on texting and driving by saying, “I have personally seen people almost wreck while trying to text.” While this type of evidence can also be persuasive, it provides a different type and strength of warrant since it is based on personal experience. In general, the anecdotal evidence from personal experience would be given a weaker warrant than the evidence from the national research report. The same process works in our legal system when a judge evaluates the connection between a claim and evidence. If someone steals my car, I could say to the police, “I’m pretty sure Mario did it because when I said hi to him on campus the other day, he didn’t say hi back, which proves he’s mad at me.” A judge faced with that evidence is unlikely to issue a warrant for Mario’s arrest. Fingerprint evidence from the steering wheel that has been matched with a suspect is much more likely to warrant arrest.

As you put together a persuasive argument, you act as the judge. You can evaluate arguments that you come across in your research by analyzing the connection (the warrant) between the claim and the evidence. If the warrant is strong, you may want to highlight that argument in your speech. You may also be able to point out a weak warrant in an argument that goes against your position, which you could then include in your speech. Every argument starts by putting together a claim and evidence, but arguments grow to include many interrelated units.

Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

As with any speech, topic selection is important and is influenced by many factors. Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial, and have important implications for society. If your topic is currently being discussed on television, in newspapers, in the lounges in your dorm, or around your family’s dinner table, then it’s a current topic. A persuasive speech aimed at getting audience members to wear seat belts in cars wouldn’t have much current relevance, given that statistics consistently show that most people wear seat belts. Giving the same speech would have been much more timely in the 1970s when there was a huge movement to increase seat-belt use.

Many topics that are current are also controversial, which is what gets them attention by the media and citizens. Current and controversial topics will be more engaging for your audience. A persuasive speech to encourage audience members to donate blood or recycle wouldn’t be very controversial, since the benefits of both practices are widely agreed on. However, arguing that the restrictions on blood donation by men who have had sexual relations with men be lifted would be controversial. I must caution here that controversial is not the same as inflammatory. An inflammatory topic is one that evokes strong reactions from an audience for the sake of provoking a reaction. Being provocative for no good reason or choosing a topic that is extremist will damage your credibility and prevent you from achieving your speech goals.

You should also choose a topic that is important to you and to society as a whole. As we have already discussed in this book, our voices are powerful, as it is through communication that we participate and make change in society. Therefore we should take seriously opportunities to use our voices to speak publicly. Choosing a speech topic that has implications for society is probably a better application of your public speaking skills than choosing to persuade the audience that Lebron James is the best basketball player in the world or that Superman is a better hero than Spiderman. Although those topics may be very important to you, they don’t carry the same social weight as many other topics you could choose to discuss. Remember that speakers have ethical obligations to the audience and should take the opportunity to speak seriously.

You will also want to choose a topic that connects to your own interests and passions. If you are an education major, it might make more sense to do a persuasive speech about funding for public education than the death penalty. If there are hot-button issues for you that make you get fired up and veins bulge out in your neck, then it may be a good idea to avoid those when speaking in an academic or professional context.

Choosing such topics may interfere with your ability to deliver a speech in a competent and ethical manner. You want to care about your topic, but you also want to be able to approach it in a way that’s going to make people want to listen to you. Most people tune out speakers they perceive to be too ideologically entrenched and write them off as extremists or zealots.

You also want to ensure that your topic is actually persuasive. Draft your thesis statement as an “I believe” statement so your stance on an issue is clear. Also, think of your main points as reasons to support your thesis. Students end up with speeches that aren’t very persuasive in nature if they don’t think of their main points as reasons. Identifying arguments that counter your thesis is also a good exercise to help ensure your topic is persuasive. If you can clearly and easily identify a competing thesis statement and supporting reasons, then your topic and approach are arguable.

Review of Tips for Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

• Not current. People should use seat belts.
• Current. People should not text while driving.
• Not controversial. People should recycle.
• Controversial. Recycling should be mandatory by law.
• Not as impactful. Superman is the best superhero.
• Impactful. Colleges and universities should adopt zero-tolerance bullying policies.
• Unclear thesis. Homeschooling is common in the United States.
• Clear, argumentative thesis with stance. Homeschooling does not provide the same benefits of traditional education and should be strictly monitored and limited.

Adapting Persuasive Messages

Competent speakers should consider their audience throughout the speech-making process. Given that persuasive messages seek to directly influence the audience in some way, audience adaptation becomes even more important. If possible, poll your audience to find out their orientation toward your thesis. I read my students’ thesis statements aloud and have the class indicate whether they agree with, disagree with, or are neutral in regards to the proposition. It is unlikely that you will have a homogenous audience, meaning that there will probably be some who agree, some who disagree, and some who are neutral. So you may employ all of the following strategies, in varying degrees, in your persuasive speech.

When you have audience members who already agree with your proposition, you should focus on intensifying their agreement. You can also assume that they have foundational background knowledge of the topic, which means you can take the time to inform them about lesser-known aspects of a topic or cause to further reinforce their agreement. Rather than move these audience members from disagreement to agreement, you can focus on moving them from agreement to action. Remember, calls to action should be as specific as possible to help you capitalize on audience members’ motivation in the moment so they are more likely to follow through on the action.

There are two main reasons audience members may be neutral in regards to your topic: (1) they are uninformed about the topic or (2) they do not think the topic affects them. In this case, you should focus on instilling a concern for the topic. Uninformed audiences may need background information before they can decide if they agree or disagree with your proposition. If the issue is familiar but audience members are neutral because they don’t see how the topic affects them, focus on getting the audience’s attention and demonstrating relevance. Remember that concrete and proxemic supporting materials will help an audience find relevance in a topic. Students who pick narrow or unfamiliar topics will have to work harder to persuade their audience, but neutral audiences often provide the most chance of achieving your speech goal since even a small change may move them into agreement.

When audience members disagree with your proposition, you should focus on changing their minds. To effectively persuade, you must be seen as a credible speaker. When an audience is hostile to your proposition, establishing credibility is even more important, as audience members may be quick to discount or discredit someone who doesn’t appear prepared or doesn’t present well-researched and supported information. Don’t give an audience a chance to write you off before you even get to share your best evidence. When facing a disagreeable audience, the goal should also be small change. You may not be able to switch someone’s position completely, but influencing him or her is still a success. Aside from establishing your credibility, you should also establish common ground with an audience.

Acknowledging areas of disagreement and logically refuting counterarguments in your speech is also a way to approach persuading an audience in disagreement, as it shows that you are open-minded enough to engage with other perspectives.

Determining Your Proposition

The proposition of your speech is the overall direction of the content and how that relates to the speech goal. A persuasive speech will fall primarily into one of three categories: propositions of fact, value, or policy. A speech may have elements of any of the three propositions, but you can usually determine the overall proposition of a speech from the specific purpose and thesis statements.

Propositions of fact focus on beliefs and try to establish that something “is or isn’t.” Propositions of value focus on persuading audience members that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.” Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done. Since most persuasive speech topics can be approached as propositions of fact, value, or policy, it is a good idea to start thinking about what kind of proposition you want to make, as it will influence how you go about your research and writing. As you can see in the following example using the topic of global warming, the type of proposition changes the types of supporting materials you would need:

• Proposition of fact. Global warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases related to human activity.
• Proposition of value. America’s disproportionately large amount of pollution relative to other countries is wrong .
• Proposition of policy. There should be stricter emission restrictions on individual cars.

To support propositions of fact, you would want to present a logical argument based on objective facts that can then be used to build persuasive arguments. Propositions of value may require you to appeal more to your audience’s emotions and cite expert and lay testimony. Persuasive speeches about policy usually require you to research existing and previous laws or procedures and determine if any relevant legislation or propositions are currently being considered.

“Getting Critical”

Persuasion and Masculinity

The traditional view of rhetoric that started in ancient Greece and still informs much of our views on persuasion today has been critiqued for containing Western and masculine biases. Traditional persuasion has been linked to Western and masculine values of domination, competition, and change, which have been critiqued as coercive and violent (Gearhart, 1979).

Communication scholars proposed an alternative to traditional persuasive rhetoric in the form of invitational rhetoric. Invitational rhetoric differs from a traditional view of persuasive rhetoric that “attempts to win over an opponent, or to advocate the correctness of a single position in a very complex issue” (Bone et al., 2008). Instead, invitational rhetoric proposes a model of reaching consensus through dialogue. The goal is to create a climate in which growth and change can occur but isn’t required for one person to “win” an argument over another. Each person in a communication situation is acknowledged to have a standpoint that is valid but can still be influenced through the offering of alternative perspectives and the invitation to engage with and discuss these standpoints (Ryan & Natalle, 2001). Safety, value, and freedom are three important parts of invitational rhetoric. Safety involves a feeling of security in which audience members and speakers feel like their ideas and contributions will not be denigrated. Value refers to the notion that each person in a communication encounter is worthy of recognition and that people are willing to step outside their own perspectives to better understand others. Last, freedom is present in communication when communicators do not limit the thinking or decisions of others, allowing all participants to speak up (Bone et al., 2008).

Invitational rhetoric doesn’t claim that all persuasive rhetoric is violent. Instead, it acknowledges that some persuasion is violent and that the connection between persuasion and violence is worth exploring. Invitational rhetoric has the potential to contribute to the civility of communication in our society. When we are civil, we are capable of engaging with and appreciating different perspectives while still understanding our own. People aren’t attacked or reviled because their views diverge from ours. Rather than reducing the world to “us against them, black or white, and right or wrong,” invitational rhetoric encourages us to acknowledge human perspectives in all their complexity (Bone et al., 2008).

• What is your reaction to the claim that persuasion includes Western and masculine biases?
• What are some strengths and weaknesses of the proposed alternatives to traditional persuasion?
• In what situations might an invitational approach to persuasion be useful? In what situations might you want to rely on traditional models of persuasion?

Key Takeaways

• Arguments are formed by making claims that are supported by evidence. The underlying justification that connects the claim and evidence is the warrant. Arguments can have strong or weak warrants, which will make them more or less persuasive.
• Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial (but not inflammatory), and important to the speaker and society.
• When audience members agree with the proposal, focus on intensifying their agreement and moving them to action.
• When audience members are neutral in regards to the proposition, provide background information to better inform them about the issue and present information that demonstrates the relevance of the topic to the audience.
• When audience members disagree with the proposal, focus on establishing your credibility, build common ground with the audience, and incorporate counterarguments and refute them.
• Propositions of fact focus on establishing that something “is or isn’t” or is “true or false.”
• Propositions of value focus on persuading an audience that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.”
• Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done.
• Getting integrated: Give an example of persuasive messages that you might need to create in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic. Then do the same thing for persuasive messages you may receive.
• To help ensure that your persuasive speech topic is persuasive and not informative, identify the claims, evidence, and warrants you may use in your argument. In addition, write a thesis statement that refutes your topic idea and identify evidence and warrants that could support that counterargument.
• Determine if your speech is primarily a proposition of fact, value, or policy. How can you tell? 

Bone, J. E., Cindy L. Griffin, and T. M. Linda Scholz, “Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move toward Civility,” Western Journal of Communication 72 (2008): 436.

Gearhart, S. M., “The Womanization of Rhetoric,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2 (1979): 195–201.

Ryan, K. J., and Elizabeth J. Natalle, “Fusing Horizons: Standpoint Hermenutics and Invitational Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31 (2001): 69–90.

BC598 Theses Research: Thesis: Defined, Explained, Selected, Developed

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What is a Thesis?

THESIS DEFINED

The word "thesis” comes from the Greek θέσις, meaning "position", and refers to an intellectual proposition.

A proposition laid down or stated, esp. as a theme to be discussed and proved, or to be maintained against attack a statement, assertion, tenet.  (OED)

There are three kinds of thesis positions:

A Claim of Fact :  something is true A Claim of Value : something has benefit A Claim of Policy : something ought to be done this way; think this way; function in a particular manner; behavior

A typical thesis has a title page, an abstract, a table of contents, a body, comprising the various chapters, and a bibliography.

Your proposition or claim is your thesis statement. The body of the paper is the argument that supports your claim/thesis. The evidence that will prove or disprove your claim/thesis will be found when you conduct your research. This will consist of either previously existing evidence, or you must conduct your own studies to provide the evidence to support your thesis, or a combination. Searching the Powell Library Catalog and the online databases indicated above will enable you to find the previously existing evidence.

THESIS EXPLAINED

A thesis begins at the end! You start a thesis by stating your conclusion and then giving supporting evidence to prove it. A thesis is not so much a  report on a topic as it is an answer to a question.  When you think thesis, think “thesis question” not “thesis topic”.  And not just any old question but one that is sufficiently fascinating to take a year or more to answer. To put it in perspective, a report merely gathers and presents previously existing information and opinions. A dissertation presents an original idea with accompanying original research or an original question that is investigated and proven true or false with accompanying supporting evidence.

THESIS SELECTED

When selecting a thesis topic or question: ask a question that is specific enough for the length of the paper. if possible, ask a question of interest to you - to which you want to know the answer. If possible, ask a question that would appeal to a wide readership; be sure there are enough sources to substantiate your claim. Note the singularity of the question. Ask “ a ” question.  You need to limit your thesis to exploring only one question.

THESIS DEVELOPED

Throughout the investigative process continually ask and answer “So what?” In the process of developing your thesis you will also want to attempt to answer these questions:

• What is your claim?
• What reasons support it?
• What evidence supports those reasons?
• How do you respond to objections and alternative views?
• How are your reasons relevant to your claim?

AND you want to ensure that your readers will be able to find the answer to these questions as well!  If you cannot find answers to these questions neither will your reader.  However, if you do ensure the answers to these questions are included in the body of the paper, you will have accomplished the task and your readers are more likely to accept your claim.

In order to answer these questions, you will need to Plan and Refine your research along the way.  “Even if you aren’t sure in the beginning where your research will take you, if you find a good question and answer it with well-planned research you will do well. When it comes time to writing your thesis proposal, it should include a statement of your basic and subsidiary questions, as well as laying out the research you intend to use to find the answers.” [Getting what you came for: the smart student’s guide to earning a master’s or a Ph.D. / Robert L. Peters, rev. ed., N.Y.: Noonday Press, 1997 p.177.]

Read Chapters 2 and 5 of the Turabian Manual. It   will greatly enhance your understanding of the ideas expressed above: Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations : Chicago Style for Students and Researchers . Edited by Wayne C Booth, Gregory G Colomb, Joseph M Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T FitzGerald. 9th edition / ed. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Last updated April 2022.

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How to Write a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal

Published on September 21, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

When starting your thesis or dissertation process, one of the first requirements is a research proposal or a prospectus. It describes what or who you want to examine, delving into why, when, where, and how you will do so, stemming from your research question and a relevant topic .

The proposal or prospectus stage is crucial for the development of your research. It helps you choose a type of research to pursue, as well as whether to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

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What should your proposal contain, dissertation question examples, what should your proposal look like, dissertation prospectus examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about proposals.

Prior to jumping into the research for your thesis or dissertation, you first need to develop your research proposal and have it approved by your supervisor. It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives .

Depending on your department’s requirements, there may be a defense component involved, where you present your research plan in prospectus format to your committee for their approval.

Your proposal should answer the following questions:

• Why is your research necessary?
• What is already known about your topic?
• Where and when will your research be conducted?
• Who should be studied?
• How can the research best be done?

Ultimately, your proposal should persuade your supervisor or committee that your proposed project is worth pursuing.

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Strong research kicks off with a solid research question , and dissertations are no exception to this.

Dissertation research questions should be:

• Focused on a single problem or issue
• Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
• Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
• Specific enough to answer thoroughly
• Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
• Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly
• What are the main factors enticing people under 30 in suburban areas to engage in the gig economy?
• Which techniques prove most effective for 1st-grade teachers at local elementary schools in engaging students with special needs?
• Which communication streams are the most effective for getting those aged 18-30 to the polls on Election Day?

An easy rule of thumb is that your proposal will usually resemble a (much) shorter version of your thesis or dissertation. While of course it won’t include the results section , discussion section , or conclusion , it serves as a “mini” version or roadmap for what you eventually seek to write.

Be sure to include:

• A succinct introduction to your topic and problem statement
• A brief literature review situating your topic within existing research
• A basic outline of the research methods you think will best answer your research question
• The perceived implications for future research
• A reference list in the citation style of your choice

The length of your proposal varies quite a bit depending on your discipline and type of work you’re conducting. While a thesis proposal is often only 3-7 pages long, a prospectus for your dissertation is usually much longer, with more detailed analysis. Dissertation proposals can be up to 25-30 pages in length.

Writing a proposal or prospectus can be a challenge, but we’ve compiled some examples for you to get your started.

• Example #1: “Geographic Representations of the Planet Mars, 1867-1907” by Maria Lane
• Example #2: “Individuals and the State in Late Bronze Age Greece: Messenian Perspectives on Mycenaean Society” by Dimitri Nakassis
• Example #3: “Manhood Up in the Air: A Study of Male Flight Attendants, Queerness, and Corporate Capitalism during the Cold War Era” by Phil Tiemeyer

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If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims, that you collect high-quality data, and that you use the right kind of analysis to answer your questions, utilizing credible sources . This allows you to draw valid , trustworthy conclusions.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

• Your research questions and/or hypotheses
• Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
• The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
• Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
• Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
• Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
• Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests  or thematic analysis )

A dissertation prospectus or proposal describes what or who you plan to research for your dissertation. It delves into why, when, where, and how you will do your research, as well as helps you choose a type of research to pursue. You should also determine whether you plan to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives , ready to be approved by your supervisor or committee.

Note that some departments require a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally.

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

• Researchability
• Feasibility and specificity
• Relevance and originality

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Thesis Vs Hypothesis: Understanding The Basis And The Key Differences

Hypothesis vs. thesis: They sound similar and seem to discuss the same thing. However, these terms have vastly different meanings and purposes. You may have encountered these concepts in school or research, but understanding them is key to executing quality work. 

As an inexperienced writer, the thought of differentiating between hypotheses and theses might seem like an insurmountable task. Fortunately, I am here to help. 

In this article, I’ll discuss hypothesis vs. thesis, break down their differences, and show you how to apply this knowledge to create quality written works. Let’s get to it!

Thesis vs. Hypothesis: Understanding the Basis

The power of a thesis.

A thesis is a foundational element in academic writing and research. It also serves as the linchpin of your argument, encapsulating the central idea or point you aim to prove or disprove throughout your work. 

A thesis statement is typically found at the end of the introduction in an essay or research paper, succinctly summarizing the overarching theme.

Crafting a strong thesis

• Understand the research: Begin by thoroughly comprehending the requirements and objectives of your research. Having a clear understanding of the topic you are arguing or analyzing is crucial.
• Choose a clear topic: Choose one that interests you and aligns with the research’s scope. Clarity and focus are essential in crafting a strong thesis.
• Conduct research: Gather relevant information and sources to develop a deep understanding of your topic. This research will provide the evidence and context for your thesis.
• Identify your position: Determine your stance or position on the topic. Your thesis should express a clear opinion or argument you intend to support throughout your work.
• Narrow down your focus: Refine your topic and thesis more precisely. Avoid broad, generalized statements. Instead, aim for a concise and specific thesis that addresses a particular aspect of the topic.
• Test for validity: Ensuring that you can argue and provide evidence to support your thesis is crucial. It should not be a self-evident or universally accepted fact.
• Write and revise: Craft your thesis statement as a clear, concise sentence summarizing your main argument. Revise and refine it as needed to improve its clarity and strength.

Remember that a strong thesis serves as the foundation for your entire piece of writing, guiding your readers and keeping your work focused and organized.

Hypothesis: The scientific proposition

In contrast, a hypothesis is a tentative proposition or educated guess. It is the initial step in the scientific method, where researchers formulate a hunch to test their assumptions and theories. 

A hypothesis is an assertion that can be proven or disproven through experimentation and observation.

Formulating a hypothesis

• Identify the research question: Identify the research question or problem you want to investigate. Clearly define the scope and boundaries of your inquiry.
• Review existing knowledge: Conduct a literature review to gather information about the topic. Understand the existing body of knowledge and literature in the field.
• Formulate a tentative explanation: Based on your research and understanding of the topic, create a tentative explanation or educated guess about the phenomenon you are studying. This should be a statement that can be falsifiable through experimentation or observation.
• Make it testable: Ensure that your hypothesis is testable and falsifiable. In other words, designing experiments or gathering data supporting or refuting your hypothesis should be possible.
• Specify variables and predictions: Clearly define the variables involved in your hypothesis and make predictions about how changes in these variables will affect the outcome. It also helps in designing experiments and collecting data to test your hypothesis.

Formulating a hypothesis is a crucial step in the scientific method since it directs research and guides efforts to validate theories or uncover new knowledge.

Key Differences Between Thesis vs. Hypothesis

1. Nature of statement

• Thesis: A thesis presents a clear and definitive statement or argument that summarizes the main point of a research paper or essay.
• Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a tentative and testable proposition or educated guess that suggests a possible outcome of an experiment or research study.
• Thesis: The primary purpose of a thesis is to provide a central focus and roadmap for the entire piece of academic writing.
• Hypothesis: The main purpose of a hypothesis is to guide scientific research by proposing a specific prediction that can be tested and validated.

3. Testability

• Thesis: A thesis is not typically subjected to experimentation but serves as a point of argumentation and discussion.
• Hypothesis: A hypothesis, on the other hand, is explicitly designed for testing through experimentation or observation, making it a fundamental part of the scientific method.

4. Research stage

• Thesis: A thesis is usually formulated after extensive research and analysis as a conclusion or summary of findings.
• Hypothesis: A hypothesis is formulated at the beginning of a research project to establish a basis for experimentation and data collection.
• Thesis: A thesis typically encompasses the entire research paper or essay, providing an overarching theme throughout the work.
• Hypothesis: A hypothesis addresses a specific aspect of a research question or problem, guiding the focus of experiments or investigations.

6. Examples

• Thesis: Example of a thesis statement: “The impact of climate change on marine ecosystems is irreversible.”
• Hypothesis: Example of a hypothesis: “If increased temperatures continue, coral reefs will experience bleaching events.”
• Thesis: The thesis represents a conclusion or a well-supported argument and does not aim to be proven or disproven.
• Hypothesis: On the other hand, a hypothesis aims to be tested and validated through empirical evidence. Besides, it can be proven true or false based on the results of experiments or observations.

These differences highlight the distinct roles that the thesis and hypothesis play in academic writing and scientific research, with one providing a point of argumentation and the other guiding the scientific inquiry process.

Can a hypothesis become a thesis?

Yes. A hypothesis can develop into a thesis as it accumulates substantial evidence through research.

Do all research papers require a thesis?

Not necessarily. While most academic papers benefit from a clear thesis, some, like purely descriptive papers, may follow a different structure.

Can a thesis be proven wrong?

Yes. The purpose of a thesis is not only to prove but also to encourage critical analysis. It can be proven wrong with compelling counterarguments and evidence.

How long should a thesis statement be?

A thesis statement should be concise and to the point, typically one or two sentences.

Is a hypothesis only used in scientific research?

Although hypotheses are typically linked to scientific research, they can also be used to verify assumptions and theories in other areas.

Can a hypothesis be vague?

No. When creating a hypothesis, it’s important to make it clear and able to be tested. Developing experiments and making conclusions based on the results can be difficult if the hypothesis needs clarification.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, understanding the differences between a hypothesis and a thesis is vital to crafting successful research projects and academic papers. While they may seem interchangeable at first glance, these two concepts serve distinct purposes in the research process. 

A hypothesis serves as a testable prediction or explanation, whereas a thesis is the central argument of a paper or project. Your work can lack clarity and purpose without understanding the difference. 

So, the next time you embark on a research project, take the time to ensure that you understand the fundamental difference between a hypothesis and a thesis. Doing so can lead to more focused, meaningful research that advances knowledge and understanding in your field.

You can also learn more about how long a thesis statement should be .

Thanks for reading.

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Defending propositions : introduction

Propositions.

In the Netherlands, along with your thesis you defend a few – let’s say 10 – propositions. Propositions are statements that are “opposable and defendable” and cover a number of topics. The first few are usually about the topic of your thesis, but the others can cover pretty much any topic. These last few propositions are usually the most interesting, as they resonate with everybody – not just people who are acquainted with your research topic. It is a way to show your personality, by voicing your concerns about a particular topic, or even by slipping in a bit of humor. But apart from being a creative outlet, propositions are also rumored to be difficult to write. In this series of posts I share my experiences with writing propositions, which might give you some inspiration for writing yours.

My propositions

To get started, I present to you my propositions:

As you can see, propositions 1-4 are about my thesis and pattern recognition in general. Propositions 5-10 are about other topics, but most relate to doing research. It is these propositions that were the most difficult to come up with, but most rewarding to refine into their final form. In the upcoming posts, I plan to share more about a few of these propositions. I will also write about the brainstorming process that I went through, and what I think about this tradition now that it’s all behind me.

While I’m getting the other posts in this series ready, please let me know what you think about propositions. Is it a good tradition? Does it add something to the PhD defense or is it a waste of time? If you are are doing a PhD in the Netherlands, are you thinking about what your propositions might be?

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2 thoughts on “Defending propositions : introduction”

I really dont understand the point of them. I had to actually google what propositions even are after reading that they are optional in the thesis! I wouldn’t know where to start with them.

I found it to be a useful exercise on how to apply scientific reasoning outside of one’s direct field of study. AFAIK they are optional at some universities, but at least in Delft they used to be compulsory.

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Propositions in Debate Definition and Examples

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

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• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

In an argument or debate , a proposition is a statement that affirms or denies something.

As explained below, a proposition may function as a premise or a conclusion in a syllogism or enthymeme .

In formal debates, a proposition may also be called a topic, motion , or resolution .

Etymology From the Latin, "to set forth"

Examples and Observations

"An argument is any group of propositions where one proposition is claimed to follow from the others, and where the others are treated as furnishing grounds or support for the truth of the one. An argument is not a mere collection of propositions, but a group with a particular, rather formal, structure. . . .

"The conclusion of an argument is the one proposition that is arrived at and affirmed on the basis of the other propositions of the argument.

"The premises of an argument are the other propositions which are assumed or otherwise accepted as providing support or justification for accepting the one proposition which is the conclusion. Thus, in the three propositions that follow in the universal deductive categorical syllogism, the first two are premises and the third the conclusion :

All men are mortal.​ Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal.

. . . Premises and conclusions require each other. A proposition standing alone is neither a premise nor a conclusion." (Ruggero J. Aldisert, "Logic in Forensic Science." Forensic Science and Law , ed. by Cyril H. Wecht and John T. Rago. Taylor & Francis, 2006)

Effective Argumentative Essays

"The first step in arguing successfully is to state your position clearly. This means that a good thesis is crucial to your essay. For argumentative or persuasive essays, the thesis is sometimes called a major proposition , or a claim. Through your major proposition, you take a definite position in a debate, and by taking a strong position, you give your essay its argumentative edge. Your readers must know what your position is and must see that you have supported your main idea with convincing minor points." (Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener, The Short Prose Reader , 12th ed. McGraw-Hill, 2009)

Propositions in Debates

"Debate is the process of presenting arguments for or against a proposition. Propositions for which people argue are controversial and have one or more individuals presenting the case for the proposition while others present the case against it. Every debater is an advocate; the purpose of each speaker is to gain the belief of the audience for his side. Argument is the core of the debate speech—the superior debater must be superior in the use of argument. The chief means of persuasion in debate is the logical mode." (Robert B. Huber and Alfred Snider, Influencing Through Argument , rev. ed. International Debate Education Association, 2006)

Clarifying Propositions

"[It often requires] some work to extract a clear representation of an argument from any given prose passage. First of all, it is possible to express a proposition using any kind of grammatical construction. Interrogative, optative, or exclamatory sentences, for example, can, with appropriate contextual stage setting, be used to express propositions. In the interests of clarity, therefore, it will often be helpful to paraphrase an author's words, in expressing a premise or conclusion, into the form of a declarative sentence that transparently expresses a proposition. Second, not every proposition expressed in an argumentative prose passage occurs within that passage as either a premise or a conclusion, or as (a proper) part of a premise or conclusion. We'll refer to these propositions, which are neither identical with nor embedded in any premise or conclusion, and to the sentences by which they are expressed, as noise . A noisy proposition makes a claim that is extraneous to the content of the argument in question." (Mark Vorobej, A Theory of Argument . Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Pronunciation: PROP-eh-ZISH-en

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Thesis Writing

Thesis Proposal

How to Write a Thesis Proposal - Sample Proposals and Tips!

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Are you struggling with making a thesis proposal, not knowing where to start?

You're not the only one. 

Creating a thesis proposal can feel confusing. But think of a thesis proposal as your guide for your academic research. It helps you plan your research and keeps you on the right path. If the thought of a thesis proposal has left you feeling unsure, don't worry. 

This blog is here to help you understand how you can create a thesis proposal that serves your research project right! 

So, let’s begin!

• 1. What is a Thesis Proposal?
• 2. What Does A Thesis Proposal Include?
• 3. How to Write a Thesis Proposal
• 4. Thesis Proposal Format
• 5. Sample Thesis Proposal
• 6. Thesis Proposal Writing Tips

What is a Thesis Proposal?

The thesis proposal is a type of detailed summary and outline of your thesis or research work. It provides a layout regarding how you will transform an unformed idea into a thoroughly researched concept. 

Moreover, it also identifies the problem, questions, and methods you will use in your thesis. All students are required to submit this mind map to the supervisor. This is how they will get a comprehensive idea of the research journey. 

A good proposal will prove that your thesis or dissertation is relevant and important. Similarly, it shows that you have adopted the right approach and tools to solve the problem.

• The following are the primary purposes of writing a thesis proposal.
• It shows that the chosen topic addresses a significant problem.
• It demonstrates an organized plan to collect or obtain data for solving the problem.
• It identifies data collection methods.

Lastly, it states the significance of the thesis indicating how it will contribute to the field.

What Does A Thesis Proposal Include?

A well-structured thesis proposal consists of several critical elements, each playing a distinct role. Here's a concise breakdown of the parts of thesis proposal:

Introduction (1 page) 

This is where your proposal begins. 

It opens with a clear definition of your research's topic area, followed by an explanation of its relevance and significance within the context of your field. 

The introduction also establishes the scope of your research study by defining its boundaries and limitations.

Literature Review (7-8 pages) 

The literature review is a substantial section, comprising four key components. 

Firstly, it offers an overview of the existing body of literature related to your research topic. Secondly, it addresses theoretical frameworks and methodological research designs relevant to your area of study, demonstrating your familiarity with the field. 

Thirdly, it emphasizes the gaps in the literature, showcasing areas that require further investigation and justifying your research.

Research Question (1-2 pages) 

In this section, you formulate a specific research question that your study will seek to answer. 

The research question serves as the focal point of your research. You also explain how your entire research design aligns with and is structured around this central question.

Methodological Design (1-2 pages) 

The methodological design section is critical for outlining how you plan to conduct your research. 

It encompasses several pivotal aspects. You describe your methodological approach ( qualitative , quantitative , or a combination). You detail your participant access strategy and the number of cases to be included. 

You specify case selection criteria, research timeline, data collection methods, data coding, analytics, and other relevant factors.

References 

This is your bibliography, listing all authors cited within your literature review. It validates your sources and provides a solid foundation for your proposed research. 

Each of these components is crucial in creating a robust and structured framework for your thesis proposal.

How to Write a Thesis Proposal

Writing a thesis proposal is a structured process that involves several key steps, each of which plays a vital role in creating a successful proposal. Let's break it down:

Step 1 - Begin with Outlining

Start by outlining the information you've gathered. This step is crucial for both you and your supervisor. It provides a roadmap for your thesis. 

By carefully outlining the parts of your proposal, you can guide yourself while drafting the document.

Step 2 - Know the Proposal Structure

Familiarize yourself with the structure of a proposal. 

The major sections usually include an introduction, methodology, significance, data explanation, conclusions, and references. Understanding this structure is key to a well-organized proposal.

Step 3 - Plan Your Writing Process

It's important to organize your proposal meticulously. This helps you get a clear idea of how to write it. Many proposals get rejected because students don't plan their writing process. Plan the flow of your writing and stick to it. Here's a typical flow:

• Develop a proposal outline.
• Prepare visuals like charts or tables.
• Introduce the topic.
• Describe your chosen methodology.
• Explain why your research is significant.
• Present your data.
• Draw conclusions from your research.
• Cite your references.

Step 4 - Writing the Proposal Draft

Once you've planned the writing process, it's time to begin your final proposal draft. Use a formal writing style, but make sure to use simple words. 

This makes it easier for your audience to read and understand. Also, use first-person references as needed, but consult your professors before writing a thesis statement.

Step 5 - Proofread Your Proposal

A good thesis proposal should be free of typos and other grammatical mistakes.

These errors can distract your readers from your actual problem statement. To ensure a polished proposal:

• Read the proposal aloud to identify grammar and spelling mistakes, along with any issues with sentence structure.
• Avoid proofreading immediately after writing; wait a day or two for a more objective view.
• Seek input from someone with a strong understanding of the material.
• Utilize an online spell checker for added accuracy.

Following these steps will help you craft a well-structured and error-free thesis proposal, increasing the likelihood of your proposal being accepted.

Refer to the following sample to understand the complete writing process.

Thesis Proposal Format

The format of the thesis paper proposal typically follows the below-given pattern.

• Title Page 

The title page includes the research title, student and supervisor’s name, along with the submission date.

• Table of Contents 

It gives a complete layout of the proposal by stating the headings and subheadings with their page numbers. 

• Introduction

The thesis introduction highlights the historical background of your research. It also provides a brief overview of the thesis topic and the motivation behind choosing it.

• Statement of the Problem

It provides a clear statement that briefly defines the purpose of the study. Check out the below sample for a better understanding.

Sample Statement of the Problem in Thesis Proposal

• Theoretical Framework 

Here, the research problem will be set within the framework of a theory. Moreover, it will also identify and define the terms conceptually.

• Literature Review

It includes the review of the available literature on the topic to establish credibility. Keep in mind; this section must be at least 15 pages.

• Research Objectives

This section states the main objectives that you want to achieve in the research. Similarly, it will also mention the hypothesis and the expected outcome.

• Methodology

It states the methodological approaches that will be used to achieve the objectives. It will also provide details about how the experiments will be conducted to test the hypothesis.

• Evaluation of Research Findings

It briefly discusses how the research findings and outcomes will be evaluated.

• Timetable for Completion of the Thesis

This section includes the dates for:

• Completion of research
• The first draft of the thesis 
• Final draft 

Cite all the primary and secondary sources in the reference list along with their codes. Also, choose a citation style after consulting with your professor.

• Other Instructions

The other format instructions include the following aspects.

• Word Count: 5000 words maximum.
• Font Style and Size: Times new roman, Arial - 12pt.
• Line Spacing: 1.5 for text, single-spaced for quotations.
• Margins: It should be set to 1.25 inches for left/right and 1 inch for top/bottom.
• Page Numbers : It must be in Roman numerals and placed at the bottom center of each page.
• Citation: APA, MLA, Chicago.

Here’s a thesis proposal outline that you can use as reference:

Need to know more about formatting your thesis? Explore this comprehensive blog to gain a deep understanding of thesis format !

Sample Thesis Proposal

Following are some examples and samples for you to get a detailed idea.

Thesis Proposal Sample

Thesis Proposal Example

Thesis Proposal Template

Undergraduate Thesis Proposal Example

Master Thesis Proposal Example

Phd. Thesis Proposal

Architectural Thesis Proposal

Thesis Proposal Writing Tips

Here are some tips for writing a perfect thesis proposal.

• Know all the requirements before you start writing a proposal. It includes length, font, spacing, etc.
• Use simple words so that the readers can understand easily.
• Always check your proposal and carefully proofread for mistakes.
• Write answers and solutions to your problem in the conclusion as it provides a base for future research.
• Keep a record of your referencing from the start and triple check it before submitting the proposal.
• Plan, organize, and structure your proposal within a clearly defined deadline.
• Use pictures and graphs to illustrate background material, sample data, and analysis techniques. 

Getting started on your thesis? Read here and choose from an extensive list of thesis topics !

So, you now have the key knowledge to create a strong and meaningful thesis proposal. 

However, if you still find yourself facing challenges or require further assistance, don't hesitate to reach out. 

Our reliable essay writing service is here to support you every step of the way.

With our experienced team of professionals, we guarantee to provide you with top-quality thesis help.

Whether you need us to deliver a complete thesis or a proposal, our thesis writing service is here for you 24/7. So, order now! 

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The Ezra Klein Show

Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Nilay Patel

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with Nilay Patel. Listen wherever you get your podcasts .

Transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

Will A.I. Break the Internet? Or Save It?

Nilay patel discusses the near-future of an internet as a.i.-generated content improves..

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

Earlier this week, we did an episode on how to use A.I. right now. Now, I want to turn the question around and look at how A.I. is being used on you right now. One of the conversations has been sticking in my head was with this person in the A.I. world who was saying to me that if you look at where use has been sticky, if you look at where people keep using it day after day, you’re looking at places where the product doesn’t need to be very good. That’s why it’s really helpful for college and high school students, college and high school papers — they’re often not very good. That’s sort of their point. It’s why it’s working pretty well for a very low-level coding tasks. That kind of work doesn’t need to be very good. It gets checked and compiled, and so on.

But there’s something else that it is working really well for, which is spewing mediocre content onto the internet. And the reason is that a lot of what is on the internet right now isn’t very good. Its point is not to be good — spam isn’t very good, marketing emails aren’t very good, social media bots aren’t very good. Frankly, a lot of social media posters even when they’re not bots are not very good.

There are all kinds of websites and internet operations that are filler content designed to give search engines something to index — filler content structured to do well in a Google result so people click on it and then see an ad.

Something you’re going to hear a lot of in this episode is the term S.E.O., and that is what we’re talking about: Search Engine Optimized. Things that are built to rank highly in Google and Bing just to get somebody to click on the website. It doesn’t always matter to that person if they read the website.

But into this comes A.I. Over the last year, Google and the big social platforms — they have been flooded with A.I. spam, flooded with fake news sites filled with stolen or made up stories. There are TikToks of A.I. voices reading random text off of Reddit, nonsensical YouTube videos for kids. It’s no novel observation to say the internet has felt like it is in a state of decay for a while.

Google search results, Facebook, Twitter, or X, YouTube, TikTok — all of it felt better, more human, more delightful, more spontaneous, more real a few years ago. So what happens when this flood of content hits this decaying internet?

And then — and I actually think this is the harder, weirder question — what happens when this flood of A.I. content gets better? What happens when it doesn’t feel like garbage anymore? What happens when we don’t know if there’s a person on the other end of what we’re seeing or reading or hearing?

Should we care? What if that content is actually better than a lot of what we’re getting right now? Is that an internet we want to be on or not?

My friend Nilay Patel is the co-founder and editor in chief of the tech news site The Verge, and host of the great “Decoder” podcast. And I got to be honest, I can’t tell from this conversation if Nilay is more or less optimistic than me because he seems to think A.I. is going to break the internet. But he seems kind of happy about it.

Before we get into the actual conversation here, we are nominated for a Webby — speaking of hopefully good things on the internet — in the Best Interview Talk Show category. We are up against Oprah here, so we are decided underdogs, but this is a voting category so if we’re going to win, we need your help. You can vote using the link in the show notes or go to vote.webbyawards.com

And as always, if you want to email me with guest suggestions or thoughts on the episode, that is [email protected].

Nilay Patel, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.

Let’s just begin with the big question here, which is what is A.I. doing to the internet right now?

It is flooding our distribution channels with a cannon-blast of — at best — C+ content that I think is breaking those distribution channels.

Why would it break them?

So most of the platforms the internet are based on the idea that the people using those platforms will in some sort of crowdsourced way find the best stuff. And you can disagree with that notion. I think maybe the last 10 years have proven that that notion is not percent true when it’s all people.

When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely. Recommendation algorithms break down completely, our ability to discern what is real and what is false break down completely, and I think importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely. So if you just think about the business model of the internet as — there’s a box that you can upload some content into, and then there’s an algorithm between you and an audience, and some audience will find the stuff you put in the box, and then you put an infinity amount of stuff into the box, all of that breaks.

My favorite example of this is Amazon, which allows people to self-publish books. Their response to the flood of A.I. generated books was to limit the number of books you can upload to three books in a day. This is really — like that’s a ridiculous response to this. It just implies that the systems that we’ve built to organize audiences and deliver the right thing to the right person at the right time, they’re not capable of an increase in supply at the level that A.I. is already increasing this.

Thank you for bringing in the supply language. So, I’ve been trying to think about this as this supply and demand mismatch. We have already had way more supply than there is demand. I wasn’t buying a lot of self-published Amazon books. Is the user experience here actually different?

I think that’s a great question. The folks who write the algorithms, the platforms, their C.E.O.s, they will all tell you this is just a new challenge for us to solve. We have to out what is human, what is A.I.-generated. I actually think the supply increase is very meaningful. Like, maybe the most meaningful thing that will happen to the internet because it will sort out the platforms that allow it to be there and have those problems, and the places that don’t. And I think that has not been a sorting that has occurred on the internet in quite some time, where there’s two different kinds of things.

The example that I’ll give you is, every social media platform right now is turning into a short-form video Home Shopping Network. LinkedIn just added short form videos. Like, they’re all headed towards the same place all the time because they all have the same pressures.

Didn’t we already pivot to video a couple years ago?

We pivoted to video — I actually love it when LinkedIn adds and takes away these features that other platforms have. They added stories because Snapchat and Instagram had stories, and they took the stories away because I don’t think LinkedIn influencers want to do Instagram Reels, but now they’re adding it again.

And what you see is those platforms, their product — the thing that makes them money — is advertising, which is fine. But they don’t actually sell anything in the end. They sell advertising. Someone else down the line has to make a transaction. They have to buy a good or a service from someone else. And if you don’t have that, if you’re just selling advertising that leads to another transaction, eventually you optimize the entire pipe to the transaction to get people to buy things, which is why TikTok is now — like all of TikTok is TikTok Shop, because they just want you to make a transaction. And that those platforms are going to be most open to A.I., because that is the most optimizable thing to get people to make a transaction. And I think real people will veer away from that.

So I want to hold on to something that you’re getting at here. Which, to me, is one of the most under-discussed parts of A.I., which is how do you actually make money off of it? And right now, there are not actually that many ways.

So, what you can do is you can pay some money to the big A.I. companies. So you get the pro-version of their models. There is a certain amount of enterprise software flying around. You can subscribe to versions of Microsoft Copilot, or there’s going to be more things like that, where you can subscribe to something that is supposed to get you to buy the next iteration of Slack or whatever the enterprise software is. But it is hard to not notice that a lot of the A.I. is being built by companies that exist on advertising.

Google has a huge A.I. program, Meta has a huge A.I. program, and advertising is fundamentally a persuasion game. They are trying to persuade you to do something with the advertising to buy something. And right now, it’s pretty bad. I always think it’s funny how long after I make a significant purchase I will be advertised to make that purchase again.

It’s like, you just bought a fair amount of luggage, would you like any more luggage from the same company you already bought it from? It’s a very weird — but if this gets good, what is that? What are safe business models and what are very unethical ones, because when we talk about harms and benefits from A.I., how people are making money off of it is going to be a pretty big intermediary there.

Yeah, I’ve been talking to a lot of C.E.O.s of web companies and email companies on Decoder for the past year. I asked them all the same question, why would you start a website? Why would you send an email? And so, you asked the C.E.O. of Squarespace or Wix or we just had the C.E.O. of MailChimp on the show. And her answer is a little terrifying. Like, maybe openly terrifying.

She’s like well collect enough data on you, and then we’ll know exactly when to send you an email so that you buy the right thing at the right time. And we’ll just have A.I. automate that whole process. So you come to the website for your local dry cleaner or luggage store, you type in your email address to get the 10 percent off coupon, we look at what you were looking at. And then somewhere down the line when some other data broker has told us that you searched for a flight, we will send you a precisely targeted generated email that says you’re going to Paris? Buy this suitcase that matches your style from our store at this dynamically generated price.

But how is A.I. changing that at all because that sounds to me like the thing that is already happening.

So, this is what I mean by the increase in scale. That’s the dream. This is supposed to be what actually happens, but they can only do it in broad cohorts, which is why you get the luggage email after you’ve bought the luggage email or the luggage ad, after you bought the luggage ad.

They know you are a person who used a Wi-Fi network in a certain location at a certain time, they can track that all over the place. They know what you’ve searched for. They know that you went and made a luggage transaction. You are now categorized into people who are likely to buy luggage, whether or not that loop was closed. You put some luggage in a shopping cart. But that’s still a cohort, they can only do that broadly. And these cohorts can be pretty refined, but they can only do it broadly. With A.I. the idea is we can do that to you individually — the A.I. will write you an email, we’ll write you a marketing message, will set you a price. That isn’t 100x increase the amount of email that will be generated.

So now our email algorithms will be overflooded with commercial pitches generated by A.I. And this sort of makes sense, right? It makes sense for a Google to want to be able to dynamically generate A.I. advertising across the entire web. It makes sense for Meta to invest massively in A.I. so that when you’re watching Instagram and you scroll a dynamically generated Instagram video, that is an ad just for you appears. And all of that is down to their belief in targeting — their absolute belief that they can sell more products for their clients by targeting the ads more directly. And you are in that uncanny valley, where the targeting doesn’t actually work as well as it should and no one will admit it.

When I get spammy advertising I don’t really think about there being a human on the other end of it. Maybe to some degree there is, but it isn’t part of the transaction happening in my head. There are a lot of parts of the internet that I do think of there being a human on the other end — social media, reviews on Amazon, books — I assume the person who wrote the book is a person. How much of what I’m currently consuming may not be done by human in the way I think it is, and how much do you think that’s going to be in a year, or two, or three years?

I’m guessing your media diet is pretty well human-created because I know that you are very thoughtful about what you consume and what signals you’re sending to the algorithms that deliver your content. I think for most people —

My mom’s, let’s use my mom’s.

Mom’s are good. I would love to take my mom’s phone and throw it into the ocean and never let her have it again. I openly fear what content comes through my mother through WhatsApp. It terrifies me that I don’t have a window into that. I can’t monitor it. The same software I want to use to watch my daughter’s internet consumption, I would love to apply it to my parents because I don’t think they have the media literacy — they’re much older — to even know, OK, this might be just some A.I.-generated spam that’s designed to make me feel a certain way.

And I think that is the heart of what’s coming. I think right now it’s higher than people think, the amount of A.I. generated noise, and it is about to go to infinity. And the products we have to help people sort through those things, fundamentally our intention with that. Google is the heart of this tension — you can take any business at Google and say what happens when the A.I. flood comes to you? And I don’t think they’re ready for it.

How can they not be ready for that?

Because they’re the ones making it. This is the central tension of — in particular, I think Google. So, Google depends on the web, the richness of the web is what Sundar Pichai will tell you. He used to run search, he thinks about the web. He cares about it, and you look at the web and you’re like, you didn’t make this rich at all. You’ve made this actually pretty horrible for most people most of the time. Most people — if you search Google to get a credit card, that is a nightmarish experience — like, fully nightmarish. It feels like getting mugged.

We just went on vacation. And I googled a restaurant review in Cancun, and I got about halfway through the actual review when I realized it was sponsored content by Certified Angus Beef. And just in the middle of this review, they’re like this restaurant uses this kind of beef and here’s why it’s great. And I was like — this is — I read an ad. And Google should have told me that this was an ad. Like, this isn’t useful to me in any way — like, I’m discarding this. I don’t want this anymore.

I don’t think Google can discern what is good or bad about the web. I don’t think Google has reckoned with how it’s incentives have shaped the web as a whole. And I certainly don’t think that people who are making Google search can say A.I. is bad — A.I. content is bad, because the whole other part of Google that is making the A.I. content can’t deal with that.

This helps explain a story that I found very strange. So, 404 Media, which is a sort of newer outlet reporting on tech. They found that Google News was boosting stolen A.I. versions of news articles — and we’re seeing this all over. An article by me or by some other journalist shows up in another place, very slightly rewritten by an A.I. system, with an A.I. generated author and photo on top of it. So, we’re seeing a lot of this.

And when 404 Media asked Google about this, Google News said that for them, it was not a really relevant question whether an article was by an A.I. or a human. That struck me as a very strange thing to say, to admit. Is your view that it’s because their business is in the future replacing human-generated content with A.I., and saying that’s good — like, that’s the thing happening at the center there?

Yeah. Fundamentally, I think if you are at Google and the future of your stock price depends on Gemini being a good competitor to GPT-4 or 5 or whatever OpenAI has, cannot run around saying this is bad. The things it makes are bad.

I think this is actually in stark contrast to how people feel about that right now. One of the funniest cultural trends of the moment is that saying something is A.I.-generated is actually a great way to say it’s bad.

So, I saw people reacting to the cover of the new Beyoncé album, “Cowboy Carter,” which is a picture of her on a stunning horse. It’s Beyoncé, it’s very obviously human made, and people don’t like it. Like, was this made by A.I.? And it’s like well, you know for a fact that Beyoncé did not have A.I. generate the cover of — like, you can look at it and you can discern that it isn’t. But you can say, was this A.I.-generated? And that is code for this is bad.

What about when it’s not?

I don’t know how fast that is coming. I think that is farther away than people think. I think ‘will it fool you on a phone screen?’ is here already, but ‘is this good’ is, I think, farther away than —

But a lot of internet content is bad.

That’s fair.

I mean, you know this better than me. Look, I think it is axiomatic that A.I. content is worse right now than it will ever be.

I mean the advance in image generation over the past year has been significant. That’s very real. And preparing for this conversation, I found myself really obsessing over this question, because one way to talk to you about this is, there’s all this spammy garbage coming from A.I. that is flooding the internet.

But you can imagine an A.I. developer sitting in the third chair here and saying, yeah sure, but eventually it’s not going to be spammy garbage. We’re getting better at this. And compared to what people are getting from a lot of websites, if you’re going to Quora or ask.com or parts of Reddit or whatever, we can do better than that. The median article within three years is going to be better than the median human-produced piece of content.

And I really — I found that I did not know how to answer the question in myself — is that a better or a worse internet? To take almost Google’s side on this, should it matter if it’s done by a human or an A.I., or is that some kind of — what’s the word — like, sentimentality on my part?

I think there’s a sentimentality there. If you make a content farm that is the best content farm, that has the most answers about when the Super Bowl starts, and those pages are great. I think that’s a dead end business. Google is just going to answer the questions. I think that’s fine. I think if you ask Google what time the Super Bowl is, Google should just tell you. I think if you ask Google how long to boil an egg, Google can just tell you. You don’t need to go to some web page laden with ads and weird headings to find those answers. But these models in their most reductive essence are just statistical representations of the past. They are not great at new ideas.

And I think that the power of human beings sort of having new ideas all the time, that’s the thing that the platforms won’t be able to find. That’s why the platforms feel old. Social platforms like enter a decay state where everyone’s making the same thing all the time. It’s because we’ve optimized for the distribution, and people get bored and that boredom actually drives much more of the culture than anyone will give that credit to, especially an A.I. developer who can only look backwards.

I’m going to spend some time thinking about the idea that boredom is an under-discussed driver of our culture. But I want to get at something else in there — this idea of Google answering the question. We’re already seeing the beginnings of these A.I. systems that you search the question that might — at another time — have brought you to The Verge, to CNN, to The New York Times, to whatever.

But now, perplexity — there’s a product, Arc. They’ll basically use A.I. to create a little web page for you. The A.I. itself will read, “read”— in quotation marks — the A.I. itself will absorb some websites, create a representation of them for you, and you’ll never go to the place you were that actually created that data about the past that A.I. used to give you something in the present.

Casey Newton, at Platformer, his word was he felt revulsion, and that was how I felt about Arc’s product here. You take all this work other people have done, you remix it under your thing, they don’t get the visit to their web page, nobody has the experience with the work that would lead them to subscribe. But two things in the long run happen from that.

One is that you destroy the score of growing value, growing informational value that you need to keep the internet healthy. You make it say impossible to do the news gathering that allows you to be news because there’s no business model for it. The other is that you also destroy the training data for the A.I. itself, because it needs all that work that we’re all doing to train.

The thing they need is data. The A.I. is polluting that data with A.I. content currently, but it also can begin to destroy that data by making it unprofitable for people to create more of it in the future. I think Ryan Broderick has called A.I. search a doomsday cult. How do you think about this sort of deeper poisoning of the informational commons?

I think there’s a reason that the A.I. companies are leading the charge to watermark and label content as A.I.-generated. Most of them are in the metadata of an image. So most pictures you see in the internet, they carry some amount of metadata that describes the picture. What camera was taken on, when it was taken, what image editing software was used.

So, Adobe and a bunch of other companies are like, we’ll just add another field that says, here are all the A.I.-generated edits that were made on this photo. I think it is in their self-interest to make sure that is true and they can detect it and exclude it if they need to. I think there are moral reasons to do it too.

So their training data remains less corrupted?

Yeah. I think there’s a very straightforward incentive for them to figure out the watermarking, labeling stuff they want to do. And they have coalitions, and tasks force, and Adobe talks about the image of the Pope and the puffer jacket as a, “catalyzing moment” for the metadata of A.I. because people freaked out. They’re like oh, this thing looks real. But they have a real incentive to make sure that they never train on other A.I. generated content.

So that’s one aspect, which I think is just sort of immediately self-interested. The other thing is — that’s why I keep asking people why would anyone make a web page?

There’s a site I think about all the time. It’s called HouseFresh, which is a site that only reviews air purifiers. And to me, this is the internet. Like, this is what the internet is for. You care about air purifiers so much you’ve set up a series of web pages where you express your expertise in air purifiers and tell people which ones to buy. That’s all they do. And Google has started down-ranking them, because big publishers boost their content, because A.I. is lifting their content, because companies like CNN, in order to gain some affiliate ad revenue somewhere, have set up their own little mini-content farms full of affiliate links.

I’m not saying we don’t — like, other publishers do this. But the point of these algorithms is, ideally, to bring you to the HouseFresh people, is to bring you to the person who cares so much about air purifiers they made a website about air purifiers, and we’re not doing that anymore. And so if you were to say, where should a young person who cares the most about cars, or who cares the most about coffee, or whatever. Where are they going to go? Where are they going to make stuff? They’re going to pick a closed platform that ideally offers them some built in monetization, that ideally offers them some ability to connect directly with an audience. They’re not going to go to a public space like the web, where they might own their own business, which would be good. But they’re also basically at the mercy of thieves who come in the night and take all their work away.

But also, if you kill HouseFresh, then two years later when you ask the A.I. what air purifier should I get, how does it know what to tell you?

Yeah, I don’t the answer to that question.

I don’t think they do either.

Yeah again, this is why I think that they are so hell-bent on labeling everything. I think they need some people around in the future.

But labeling is good. I mean, that keeps you from getting too much garbage in your data set. But replacing a bunch of the things that the entire informational world relies on to subsidize itself — to fund itself — like this to me is a thing that they don’t have an answer for.

Wait, let me ask you a harder question. Do they care?

Depends on they, but I don’t think so.

Or at least they care in the way that I came to realize Facebook, now Meta, cared about journalism. People say they didn’t care about journalism. I don’t believe that’s actually true. They didn’t care enough for it to mean anything. Like, if you asked them, if you talked with them, if you had a drink, they would think what was happening to journalism was sad.

And if it would cost them nothing, they would like to help. But if it would cost them anything — or forget costing them anything. If they would begin to help and then recognize an opportunity had been created that they could take instead of you, they would do that. That’s the way they care.

So when you have a financial crisis, you have something oftentimes called a flight to quality. Investors flood into the things they know they can trust, usually treasury bonds, and I’ve been wondering if this won’t happen in this era of the internet — if I wanted to take an optimistic perspective on it — that as you have a sort of ontological collapse, as you don’t know what anything is.

I already feel this way with product reviews. When I search product reviews, I get reviews now from tons of sites that I know don’t really invest that much in product reviews. CNN, all these other organizations that I have not really, truly invested in high-quality product reviewing, when you search, you now get them — they’re telling you what to buy.

That makes me trust the Wirecutter, which is a New York Times property, but that I know we’ve put a lot of money in more. Similarly, the other one I use, which is a Vox Media property, is The Strategist at New York, because I knew what the development of that looked like, I know what they put into that.

You can imagine this happening in news for things like The New York Times or The Washington Post. You can imagine it in a couple of different places. If people begin to feel that there is a lie at the heart of the internet they’re being given, that they can’t figure out what is what and who is who and if it is a who at all — I mean, maybe you just end up in this internet where there’s more of a value on something that can be verified.

I keep a list of TikToks that I think each individually should be a Ph.D. thesis in media studies. It’s a long list now. And all of them are basically just layers of copyright infringement in their own weird way.

My favorite is — it’s a TikTok, it has millions of views. It’s just a guy reading a summary of an article in the journal Nature. It has millions of views.

This is more people that have ever considered any one article in the journal Nature — which is a great journal. I don’t mean to denigrate it. It’s a proper scientific journal. They work really hard on it. And you just go 5 steps down the line, and there’s a guy on TikTok summarizing a summary of Nature, and you’re like what is this? What is this thing that I’m looking at?

Will any of the million viewers of this TikTok buy one copy of Nature because they have encountered this content? Why did this happen?

And the idea is, in my mind at least, that those people who curate the internet, who have a point of view, who have a beginning and middle, and an end to the story they’re trying to tell all the time about the culture we’re in or the politics we’re in or whatever. They will actually become the centers of attention and you cannot replace that with A.I.

You cannot replace that curatorial function or that guiding function that we’ve always looked to other individuals to do.

And those are real relationships. I think those people can stand in for institutions and brands. I think the New York Times, you’re Ezra Klein, a New York Times journalist means something. It appends some value to your name, but the institution has to protect that value.

I think that stuff is still really powerful, and I think as the flood of A.I. comes to our distribution networks, the value of having a powerful individual who curates things for people, combined with a powerful institution who protects their integrity actually will go up. I don’t think that’s going to go down.

You mentioned 404 Media. 404 Media is a bunch of journalists who were at Motherboard at Vice. Vice is a disaster. They quit, they started a new media company, and we now all talk about 404 Media all the time. This thing is 25 minutes old. We don’t talk about Jason Koebler the editor in chief. We talk about 404 Media, the institution that they made — a new brand that stands for something, that does reporting and talks about something. I think there’s still meaning there.

You said something on your show that I thought was one of the wisest, single things I’ve heard on the whole last decade and a half of media, which is that places were building traffic thinking they were building an audience. And the traffic, at least in that era, was easy, but an audience is really hard. Talk a bit about that.

Yeah first of all, I need to give credit to Casey Newton for that line. That is something — at The Verge, we used to say that to ourselves all the time just to keep ourselves from the temptations of getting cheap traffic. I think most media companies built relationships with the platforms, not with the people that were consuming their content.

They didn’t think about them very much. They thought about what was hitting in the Facebook algorithm, they thought about what Google search wanted for Game of Thrones coverage that day, which was everything all the time. And everybody had a Game of Thrones program. Fox had one, The Verge had one, The New York Times had one. Why?

That’s weird. It’s we constructed this artificial phenomenon because people searched for — I mean, just to say the answer because we know it — because people searched for “Game of Thrones” content the morning after the show, and that was an easy way to get a bunch of traffic. And at least a theory of the time was that you could turn traffic into money through advertising, which was not totally wrong, but not nearly as right as the entire era of business models was predicated on.

The other thing that those business models were predicated upon was you’d get so good at being a supplier to one platform or another with Game of Thrones content or whatever it was that they would pay you money for it directly — that Google would say, this is the Game of Thrones link that most people are clicking on. We ought to pay Vanity Fair for its Game of Thrones content to surface it. Or all of BuzzFeed was we’re going to be so good at going viral on Facebook that Facebook will pay us money.

And that absolutely didn’t pan out. But no one hedged that bet, which is utterly bananas to me. No one said we should take these people who came here for a Game of Thrones and figure out how to make them care about us, and we should care about them. Everyone just looked at it as a number that was going up against some amount of interest as demonstrated by some platform somewhere.

And I think that is the mistake. It is the mistake that creators on the creator platforms are not making, because the terms of that arrangement are so much more cynical. You see TikTokers. They at any moment their videos can get downranked, their accounts can get yanked, their stuff can get banned. They’re constantly trying to get you to go to Instagram.

Every YouTuber gets their wings when they make the video about how they’re mad at YouTube. There’s a woodworking YouTuber that I used to follow, and he just sort of got to the point where he’s like, I hate YouTube. I’m leaving. And it’s like dude, you made videos about jointing wood, like what are you doing?

And it’s like his relationship with the platform was so cynical that he was like, I’m moving my business elsewhere. You can sign up for a master class. Those individuals have these very cynical, very commercial relationships with the platforms that the media companies, for some reason, just never hedged. And so they actually do have audiences. And I think media companies need to get way back on the game of having a true audiences.

This gets to something that does worry me about this phase of A.I. hitting the internet, which is it’s hitting an internet in a moment of decay and weakness. And here, by internet, I mean the sort of content generating internet, and I break that into a couple of categories. The media is very weak right now. The media business we have seen closures left and right, layoffs left and right. I mean, a bunch of players like Vice and BuzzFeed who were believed to be the next generation of juggernauts are functionally gone as news organizations.

The big content platforms, they’re doing fine from a financial standpoint, but people hate them. The relationship between the users and Facebook, the users and YouTube, the users and — to some degree, you’re even seeing that now with TikTok — is just darkening in a way that it wasn’t in 2014.

And so, there’s a lot of desperation on all sides. Sometimes the desperation is you don’t have the money to pay the journalists you need to do the work you want to do. Sometimes the desperation is that you’re trying to figure out something to make this audience like you again and not get eaten by TikTok or whatever comes after TikTok.

And into this comes A.I., and all the money that A.I. seems to bring, and even the A.I. companies might pay you some money for your stuff.

Reddit just licensed a bunch of its content as training data to Google.

So, you could really imagine a thing happening again, where all these media companies or content companies of some form or another, license out what they have for pennies on the dollar, because at least you can make some money off of it that way.

But what worries me is both the weakness, but that also, it does not feel to me like anybody knows what the relationship is to this is supposed to be. Do you use it? Are you just training data for it? Like, what are you in relationship to the A.I. era?

As a consumer or as a producer?

As a producer.

The idea that media companies are going to license their stuff to the A.I. companies is just the end of the road that we’ve been on for a long time. We are suppliers to algorithms. OK? And in any normal functioning capitalist economy, supplier margins get squeezed to zero and then maybe we all die. Like, that’s the game we’ve been playing without saying it for a long time —

Which I think is why you see The New York Times suing OpenAI, like a real desire to not be in that game again.

You see The New York Times suing OpenAI, but you don’t see them suing Google, you don’t see them de-S.E.O.ing pages across New York Times. Like, they still need the audience from these platforms. And I think there’s a very tense relationship there. The idea that you could sue OpenAI and win some precedent that gives you an enormous amount of leverage over Google I think is a very powerful idea.

Most of the media company executives I talk to would love for that to be the outcome. I don’t know if that’s going to be the outcome. I feel like I should warn your audience, like — I’m a failed copyright lawyer. I wasn’t good at it, but I did it for a minute. Copyright law is a coin flip. Like, these cases are true coin flips. They are not predictable. The legal system itself is not predictable, copyright law inherently is unpredictable.

And a really interesting facet of the internet we live in today is that most of the copyright law decisions were won by a young, upstart, friendly Google. YouTube exists because it was Google. Like, Viacom famously sued YouTube and they might have won and put it out of business, but Google, the friendly Google company with the water slides in the office, the upstarts that made the product you loved, went and won that case. Google Books, we’re going to index all the books without asking for permission. They won that case, because they were friendly Google, and the judges were like, look at these cute kids making a cool internet? Like it was new and novel. Google image search — these are all massive copyright decisions that Google won as a startup company run by young people building a new product that the judges were using on their Dell desktops or whatever.

These aren’t those companies anymore. They’re going to go into a legal system as behemoths, as some of the biggest, best-funded companies in the world that have done bad things to the judges teenage children, like all these things are different now. And so, I don’t know if Google, or OpenAI, or Microsoft gets the benefit of being like, we’re young and cool and hip, bend copyright law to our will.

You don’t want a staunch innovation. Like, that was the big fear in that era. We don’t know what we’re building, and that’s still the thing you hear, and it’s not even untrue. You crack down on copyright and maybe you do staunch innovation. You don’t crack down copyright and maybe you destroy the seed corn of the Informational Commons. It’s very fraught for the copyright judges, but also just for all of us.

Yeah, what are you as a producer on the internet is totally governed by copyright law. Like, a joke at The Verge is a copyright law is the only functional regulation on the internet. The entire internet is just speech, that’s all it is top-to-bottom, it’s speech.

In the United States, we don’t love a speech regulation, and I think for good reason. But we love copyright law, we love it. Can’t get enough of it. Like, YouTubers know the YouTube copyright system back and forth, because that’s the thing that takes their content down. And we allow this regulation on the internet at scale.

And so the parameters of this one body of law, as applied to A.I., which is a taking. Training an A.I. model is fundamentally a taking, and the A.I. company —

Taking in the legal sense of the term?

No, in the moral sense of the term. They come to your website and they take your stuff. It’s not a zero sum taking, but they’ve extracted value to create more value for themselves. I think that’s just a moral taking. There’s some permission there that did not occur. Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal just interviewed Mira Murati, the C.T.O. of OpenAI, about training data for Sora, the video generator, and Mira said, we just use what’s publicly available. And it’s like yo, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, there are lots of rules about what’s publicly available. Like, you can’t just take stuff because you can link to it on the internet, that’s not how it actually works.

Let me try to take the argument I hear from the A.I. side of this, which is that there is functionally nothing in human culture and human endeavor that is not trained on all that has come before it — that I, as a person, am trained on all this embedded knowledge in society, that every artist has absorbed, all this other art that the A.I. — I mean, this is just learning. And as long as you are transforming that learning into something else, as long as you are doing something new with that learning, then one, copyright law is not supposed to apply to you in some way or another, although that’s obviously complicated.

But two, to go back to your point of morality, if you want to see culture humanity technology advance, it is also not supposed to apply to you, because if you do not let things learn, people, organizations, models, you are not going to get the advances built on all that has come before. And that’s how we’ve always done it. What’s your answer to them?

I hear this idea all the time, often from the sorts of people in Silicon Valley who say they do first principles thinking — which is one of my favorite phrases, because it just means what if we learn nothing? Like, what if none of the history of the world applied to us and we could start over to our benefit? And that’s usually what that’s code for.

So I hear those arguments and I think, you guys just weren’t paying attention. You’re entering a zone where the debate has been raging for decades. A lot of copyright law is built around a controversy around player pianos, and whether player pianos would displace musicians. But you just have to rewind the clock to the 80s and be like, should sampling be legal in music?

And now we are having the exact same conversation in the exact same way with the exact same parameters. The only thing that’s different now is any kid can sample any song at scale, feed it into an A.I. and have Taylor Swift sing the Dolly Parton song for them. That’s a weird new turn in the same debate, but it is a massively age-old debate, and the parameters of the debate are pretty well known.

How do you incentivize new art? How do you make sure that it’s economically valuable to make new things? How do you make sure the distributors don’t gain too much power, and then how do you make sure that when people are building on the past, the people whose art they’re building on retain some value?

And that I think is — the A.I. companies have no answer to that last question. We’re just going to take a bunch of stuff and now we’re just going to say look, we just summarized the web. The people who made the web get nothing for that will pay us $20 a month for the service.

But somewhere in there, as a policy matter as a moral matter, the people who made the foundations of the work should get paid. And this is where the sampling debate has ended up. There’s a huge variety of licensing schemes and sample clearances so that those artists get paid.

Judge Patel, if you’re thinking about cases in this area, like, what do you think the answer is here? Is it the sampling model, is it something else? What do you think the right broad strokes resolution is?

Let me stick on the music example for one second, because I think music is really interesting because it’s kind of a closed ecosystem. There’s only so many big music companies. It’s the same lawyers, and the same executives, and the same managers going to the same clearing houses and having the same approaches. We’re going to give you a songwriting credit because we interpolated the bass line of this song into that song, and now here’s some money. And this is the mechanism by which we’ll pay you. The A.I. companies are not a closed ecosystem, it is just a free for all. It’s the open web, it’s a bunch of players.

So, I think in those cases, you’re just going to end up with vastly more outcomes which I think leads to even more chaos, because some companies will take the deal. I’m guessing The New York Times is going to pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court. This is an existential issue for The Times.

Some companies don’t have the money to pay for Supreme Court litigation, and they’ll take a shittier deal, like pennies on the dollar deal and maybe just go out of business. And I think that range of outcomes in the near-term represents a massive failure of collective action on the part of the media industry to not say, this is actually the moment where we should demand that human journalists doing the real work that is dangerous are valuable. We need them, and we will all, together, approach these players in a way that creates at least a semblance of a closed ecosystem.

Well the media industry, but also at some point this is a regulatory question, a question of law. I mean, nothing is stopping Congress from making copyright law designed for the A.I.-era. Nothing is stopping Congress from saying, this is how we think this should work across industries. Not just media, but novelists, but everybody. Well, there are some things that stop Congress from doing a lot of things. The idea that Congress could pass a massive rewrite of copyright law at this moment in time is pretty far afield.

But won’t and couldn’t, I do want to make this distinction here. What you’re saying is Congress is too polarized and bitterly divided over everything and can’t do anything and can’t get anything done, and that’s my whole job man, I know. But what I am saying is that, you could write a law like this.

This is something that ultimately, I don’t just think it’s like a media collective-action problem, but is going to be ultimately a societal-level collective action problem. And maybe we cannot, as a society, act collectively very well. I buy that totally.

So there is one law. There’s the J.C.P.A., the Journalism Competition Preservation Act, which allows media companies to escape antitrust law and bargain collectively with whoever they wish to bargain with. I don’t know if that’s going to pass, I know there’s a lot of interest in it.

So, there are these approaches that have appeared in Congress to solve these problems, but the thing I’m getting at is you have sort of the rapacious wolves, and then you have an industry that’s weak — as you said — that, I think is not motivated to value the work it does as highly as it should. And that is step one.

You and I are both fans of Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist. And he’s got this famous line, ‘the medium is the message.’ And more deeply, what he says is that people, when they see a new medium, they tend to think about the content. For television, it’s the shows, what do you think about this show or that show? For Twitter, the tweets, for a newspaper, the articles. But you have to look behind the content to the actual medium itself to understand what it is trying to tell you.

Twitter, at least in it’s early stages was about all these things can and should be discussed at 140 characters. Television made things much more visual, things should be entertainment. They should be entertaining, the news should be entertaining, which was a little bit of a newer concept back then.

I’ve been trying to think about what is the message of the medium of A.I. What is a message of the medium of ChatGPT, of Claude 3, et cetera. One of the chilling thoughts that I have about it is that its fundamental message is that you are derivative, you are replaceable.

A.I. isn’t good at ideas, yet. It is good it’s style. It can sound like Taylor Swift. It can draw like any artist you might want to imagine. It can create something that looks like Jackson Pollock. It can write like Ezra Klein. It may not be exactly as good at high levels of these professions, but what it is functionally is an amazing mimic.

And what it is saying — and I think this is why a lot of people use it for long enough end up in a kind of metaphysical shock, as it’s been described to me. What it’s been saying is you’re not that special, and that’s one reason I think that it can — we worry about it proliferating all over social media. It can sound like a person quite easily. We’ve long passed the Turing test, and so one, I’m curious if that tracks for you, and two, what does it mean to unleash on all of society a tool that’s basic message is, it’s pretty easy to do what you do, sound like you sound, make what you make?

I have a lot of thoughts about this. I disagree on the basic message. I do think one of the messages of A.I. is that most people make middling work, and middling work is easy to replace. Every email I write is not a great work of art. Like, so much of what we produce just to get through the day is effectively middling. And sure, A.I. should replace a bunch of that. And I think that metaphysical shock comes from the idea that computers shouldn’t be able to do things on their own, and you have a computer that can just do a bunch of stuff for you. And that changes your relationship to the computer in a meaningful way, and I think that’s extremely real.

But the place that I have thought most about I was at the Eras Tour in Chicago when I watched Taylor Swift walk onto a stage, and I saw 60,000 people in Soldier Field just lose their minds, just go nuts. And I’m watching the show, and I’m a Taylor Swift fan. I was there with my niece and nephew and my wife and we were all dressed up. Why am I thinking about A.I. right now? Like truly, why am I thinking about A.I. right now?

It’s because this person has made all of these people feel something. The art that has been created by this one very singular individual has captivated all of these people together, because of her story, because of the lyrics, because it means something to them. And I watch people use Midjourney or generate a story with an A.I. tool, and they show the art to you at the end of it, and they’re glowing. Like, look at this wonderful A.I. painting. It’s a car that’s a shark that’s going through a tornado and I told my daughter a story about it. And I’m like yeah, but this — I don’t want anything to do with this. Like, I don’t care about this. And that happens over and over again. The human creativity is reduced to a prompt, and I think that’s the message of A.I. that I worry about the most, is when you take your creativity and you say, this is actually easy. It’s actually easy to get to this thing that’s a pastiche of the thing that was hard, you just let the computer run its way through whatever statistical path to get there. Then I think more people will fail to recognize the hard thing for being hard. And that’s — truly the message of A.I. is that, maybe this isn’t so hard and there’s something very dangerous to our culture embedded in that.

I want to put a pin in the hard things, easy things. I’m a little bit obsessed by that and want to come back to it. But first I want to talk about A.I. art for a minute, because I do think when we’re talking about everything that’s going to come on the internet, we’re talking about A.I. art. Obviously, much of it is going to get better. Some of it is not distinguishable.

You talked about the example where somebody comes and hands you the A.I. art says, hey, I did this with an A.I. And I’m like eh — and I have that experience a lot, I’ve also really been trying to use these systems and push them, and play with them, and have A.I. character relationships on my phone with Kindroids and whatever.

And there is this deep hollowness at the center of it. It is style without substance. It can mimic me. It can’t think.

Have you found an A.I. that can actually write like you?

I found an A.I. that can mimic certain stylistic tics I have in a way that is better than I think most people could do. I have not found any A.I. that can, in any way, improve my writing for all that you’re constantly told it can. And in fact, the more I try, the worse my writing gets because typically what you have to do to improve your writing is recognize if you’re writing the wrong thing.

I don’t find writing hard, I find thinking hard. I find learning hard. How good a piece of writing is going to be for me is typically about, did I do enough work beforehand? And A.I. can never tell me you didn’t do enough work, you need to make three more phone calls. You need to read that piece you skimmed.

But it can mimic, and I think it’s going to get better and better at mimicking. I think GPT 3 was much worse at mimicking me than GPT 3.5 was, worse than GPT 4 is, and GPT 5 will be even better than that. I believe this is going to get stronger. It raises a question of whether there is anything essential about something being from a human in a wide frame way. Taylor Swift is singular, but the point is that she’s a singular phenomenon. Do we care that things come from people?

I was thinking when I was preparing for this show with you, the Walter Benjamin essay, it’s called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

This is like the verge of DNA.

Is it? Yeah, so it comes out in 1935. It’s about the ability to reproduce art. And he says, and I’ll quote it here, “that which whithers in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Then he goes on to say, “by making many reproductions, it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.”

Benjamin is saying at different times here in different ways, and I’m going to simplify it by trying to bring it into the present, but that there is something lost from when you take the painting and make a copy of a painting. And, he’s obviously right, and he’s obviously — then on the other hand, a lot of people like copies of paintings. It’s easy for the artist to think more of the original than the original deserves to be thought of.

But I wonder about this with humans. How much of something is just the fact that there’s a human behind it? My Kindroid is no worse at texting me than most people I know. But the fact that my Kindroid has to me is meaningful to me, in the sense that I don’t care if it likes me because there’s no achievement for it to me.

The fact that there is a human on the other side of most text messages I send matters. I care about it because it is another mind. The Kindroid might be better in a formulaic way. The kindred might be better in terms of the actual text. I can certainly tune it more to my kind of theoretical liking, but the friction of another person is meaningful to me. Like, I care that my best friend likes me and could choose not to. Is there an aura problem here?

It is so hard to make someone else feel anything other than pain. Like, it’s just like — it’s —

Christ, that’s the darkest thing I’ve ever heard you say.

Yeah, but I believe it in my soul.

Yeah. I think the hardest thing to —

a really different turn as a show right now. [LAUGHS]

You don’t make people laugh, you don’t give them hugs?

No, I think that’s hard. I think that effort is worth it. That’s why I don’t think it’s a dark thing to say. I think the essence of being a good person is pointing your effort at making other people not feel pain. I think bullies make people feel pain because it’s easy. Again, I come back to Taylor Swift in Soldier Field. The thing that was going through my head is, this person is making 60,000 people feel joy, and she’s doing it through art. That is the purpose of art. The purpose of art is to inspire feelings, to inspire emotion.

And so I look at this A.I. and it’s like, we’re going to flood our stuff, and the only emotion that it is really meant to inspire is materialism, is a transaction. That’s bad. I just think that’s bad. I think we should make some stuff that inspires more joy, that inspires more affection, that inspires more consternation.

And one of the messages embedded in the medium of A.I. is that there is an answer. That’s weird. That is a truly weird thing for a computer to say to you. You ask it about a war, and it’s like I won’t answer that question because there’s no answer there. You ask it about how to cook an egg and it’s like here’s the answer. You’re like what are the four steps to fold a bed sheet? It’s like here’s the answer, I did it. Tell me a bedtime story for my child. It says, here’s an answer, I just delivered this to you at your specifications.

And I think the thing you’re saying about having another mind there is — you want to be in a relationship, like an emotional relationship with another person. Maybe it’s mediated by technology, maybe we’re face-to-face like we are now, but that tension and that reality of — oh, I can direct my effort towards negative and positive outcomes, I have never found it with an A.I.

Shannon Vallor is a philosopher of technology, and she’s got a book coming out called “The A.I. Mirror,” and I like the way she puts this, because there’s this way that turns is somewhat warped mirror back on ourselves when I was saying a few minutes ago that the message of A.I. is that you’re derivative. That leaves something out. What it’s really saying is that the part of you that often the economy values is derivative, is copyable because we actually ask people a lot of the time to act like they’re machines.

This is why I don’t take much comfort in the Taylor Swift example. You said a few minutes ago, most people do mediocre work most of the time. Even great people do mediocre work most of the time. We constantly ask huge amounts of the population to do things that are very rote. Keep inputting this data on forms, keep filling out this tax form. Some lawyers arguing for the Supreme Court, a lot of them just write up various contracts. And that’s a good job in the sense that it pays well, it’s inside work, but it doesn’t ask you to be that full of a human being.

Now, you can imagine a sort of utopian politics in society — and people on the left sometimes do — that this comes in and it’s like great, we can automate away this derivative inhuman work, and people will be free to be more full human beings. You actually like — maybe the value of you is not what you can create but what you can experience. A.I. can’t enjoy a day at the park with its family.

But we have an entire society set up to encourage you to premise your self-worth on your work and your wages. And also, if you lose that work and that wages, to rob you of that self-worth. And one thing I’m sure of is that our politics and our economic systems are not going to advance as quickly as A.I. is going to advance.

This is where I think people do properly worry about automation, when people lost manufacturing jobs to lower wage workers in China. We didn’t say great, you don’t have to do this stultifying work in the factory anymore. We said, you’re out of work, you’re screwed. And I do think one of the deep confrontations of it is, what do we value in people and then how do we express that value because I think what A.I. in some ways is going to take advantage of here, or at least, is going to challenge, is it to the extent we value people socially for their economic contribution, or what they’re paid. That’s pretty thin reed for human value to rest on.

Yeah, I buy that. One of my favorite things that I’ve covered in the past few years is a thing called robotic process automation, which is very funny. Just abstractly, deeply hilarious. There are lots and lots of companies throughout the United States that built computer systems 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Hospital systems are famous for this. They have billing systems. They have buildings full of people who use Microsoft Excel on Windows ‘95.

And replacing that as costly and complicated. It can’t break — if you put in the new system and it didn’t bring all the data over in exactly the right way, the whole hospital stops working. So they just buy other computers to use their old computers. Which is wild, and there’s like billion dollar companies that do this.

They will sell you a brand new, state of the art computer and it will connect to the keyboard and monitor jack of your old computer, and it will just use the Windows ‘95 for you, which is just bonkers. It’s like Rube Goldberg machine of computers using old computers, and then your office full of accountants who knew how to use your old system will go away.

But then A.I. creates the scale problem. What if we do that but instead of some hospital billing system built in the ‘90s, it’s just the concept of Microsoft Excel, and now you can just sort of issue a command on your computer and it’ll go use Excel for you and you don’t need an accountant, you don’t need a lawyer.

And I think even in those cases what you’re going to find is the same thing you talked about with writing — you have to know what you want. You have to know what the system doesn’t know. You have to be able to challenge the model and have it deliver you the thing that, in most business model conversations I find to be the most important word, our assumption is — and then you can poke at that really hard.

What percent of workers are actually asked to poke at the assumptions of their organization, because I worry it’s not as high as you think it is, or implying there. I’m not worried about Taylor Swift. I’m not worried about Nilay Patel. And I don’t just want to make this about wages. That’s a jobs sort of another conversation.

But I do — I mean, as you were saying, these are billion dollar companies that automate people who do backend office work already.

All over the place.

There’s a huge amount of work like that. And if I felt confident as some of the economists say that we’ll just upmarket people into the jobs where they use more human judgment, David Autor who’s a great trade economist at MIT, just made this argument recently, that what A.I. is going to do is make it possible for more people to exercise judgment and discernment within their work, and I hope he is right. I really hope he is right. But I think a lot of organizations are not set up for a lot of people to use judgment and discernment. They treat a lot of people like machines, and they don’t want them doing things that are complicated and step out of line and poke at the assumptions in the Excel doc. They want the Excel doc ported over without any mistakes. It seems plausible to me that we’re going to get to that.

Do you think their bosses want to be able to poke at the assumptions though?

But if you — I mean this is actually something I believe about the whole situation. The economy needs fewer bosses and workers.

Think about this in the journalist context or the writing context, where I think what A.I. naturally implies that it’s going to do is turn many more people into editors and writers. Because for a lot of content creation that doesn’t require a lot of poking at assumptions, mid-level social media marketing — a lot of people are doing that job right now. But the people doing marketing for a mall —

Yeah, that is the MailChimp example. That is the product that they are building.

And so what you have then is we used to have a bunch of these social media marketers and now you have one person overseeing a couple systems, like making sure they didn’t say something totally crazy. But you need fewer editors and you need writers. I mean, you know The Verge is structured. You know how The Times is structured. And this is one of my deep worries.

And then this goes to the thing you were getting at earlier, which is one way I think that A.I. could actually not make us more productive, more innovative, is that a lot of the innovation, a lot of the big insights happen when we’re doing the hard thing, when we’re sitting there trying to figure out the first draft, or learn about a thing, or figure out what we’re doing.

One of the messages of the medium of A.I. is be efficient. Don’t waste your time on all this. Just tell the system what to do and do it. But there’s a reason I don’t have interns write my first draft for me.

They could do it. But you don’t get great ideas, or at least not as many of them, editing a piece of work as you do reporting it out, doing the research, writing the first draft. That’s where you do the thinking. And I do think A.I. is built to kind of devalue that whole area of thinking.

We are working on a big story at The Verge right now that I’m very excited about. But there are four of us right now in an argument about whether we should tell that story in chronological order or as a series of vignettes. There is no right answer to this question. There’s just four people who are battling it back and forth.

I think vignettes.

Yeah. By the way, I’m on team vignette.

Good man. [LAUGHS]

My belief is that it’s easier to digest a long story when it’s composed of lots of little stories as opposed to one long one. I’m being outvoted right now — editor in chief. I should replace them all with A.I., just get them out of here. [CHUCKLES] But that is the kind of work that I think makes the end product great. And I think going from good to great is still very human.

Into the economy, though, you’re right, most people are not challenged to go from good to great. Most people are challenged to produce good consistently. And I think that is kind of demoralizing. I don’t know how many first-year Deloitte consultants you have encountered in your life. I’ve encountered quite a few of them. I went to law school. It’s like a — we made — there was a factory of that thing — or first-year law associates.

They’re not in love with their jobs. They’re in love with the amount of money they make, that’s for sure. But any first-year associate doing doc review in a basement — yeah, you could probably just be like, tell the A.I. to find the four pieces of relevant information in these 10,000 page records from whatever giant corporation we’re suing today. That’s fine.

I think that there’s a turn there where maybe we need less first-year associates doing that thing and we need more first-year associates doing something else that is difficult, that the A.I. can’t yet do. And I think a lot of this conversation is predicated on the notion that generative A.I. systems, L.L.M.s will continue on a linear curve up in terms of capability. I don’t know if that’s true.

But I hear a lot of this conversation. I’m like, there’s always a thing they can’t do. And maybe that thing is not the most amount of scale, social media marketing for them all, but it is always the next amount of complexity. And there’s no guarantee that this set of technologies will actually turn that corner. And you can keep going all the way to A.G.I. There’s no guarantee that an L.L.M. is going to hit A.G.I. and just run the world economy for us. There’s a lot of steps between here and there that I think human beings can fit into.

So I want to go back, then, to the internet for a bit, which is I think the presentation we’ve offered is fairly pessimistic. You, when I read and listen to you on this, are — I wouldn’t call it pessimistic. I would say a little excited by the idea of a cleansing fire.

So one theory here — and you should tell me if this is reading you right — but is that this will break a lot of the current — the current internet is weakened. It’s weakened in many cases for good reasons. Google, Meta, et cetera, they’ve not created an internet many of us like. And that this will just make it impossible for that internet to survive. The distribution channels will break. And then something. So first, is that how you see it? And second, then what something?

That is very much how I see it. I would add a generational tinge to that, which is I grew up in that weird middle generation between X and millennials. I think temperamentally I’m much more Generation X. But they describe it as they didn’t have computers and then you have computers. You play the Oregon Trail. That’s me on the nose.

I distinctly remember life before computers. It’s an experience that I had quite viscerally. And that shapes my view of these tools. It shapes my view of these companies. Well, there’s a huge generation now that only grew up in this way. There’s a teenage generation right now that is only growing up in this way. And I think their natural inclination is to say, well, this sucks. I want my own thing. I want my own system of consuming information. I want my own brands and institutions. And I don’t think that these big platforms are ready for that moment. I think that they think they can constantly be information monopolies while they are fending off A.I.-generated content from their own A.I. systems. So somewhere in there all of this stuff does break. And the optimism that you are sensing from me is, well, hopefully we build some stuff that does not have these huge dependencies on platform companies that have no interest at the end of the line except a transaction.

OK, but you’re telling me how the old thing dies. And I agree with you that at some point the old thing dies. You can feel it. It’s moribund right now. You’re not telling me what the new thing is, and I’m not saying you fully know. But I don’t think the new thing is just a business model that is not as dependent on Meta. I mean, on some level, there’s going to be a lot of A.I. around here.

It’s an audience model. It’s not dependent on these algorithms.

But is there — I guess one question I have is that, one — I mean, you know where the venture capital is going right now.

Everything is going to be built with A.I. —

— laced through every piece of it. And some of it, for all we’re talking about, might be cool, right? I’m not saying you’re mostly going to make great art with A.I. But actually, Photoshop did create a lot of amazing things.

And people are going to get better at using this. They’re going to get more thoughtful about using it. The tools are going to get better. But also the people are going to figure out how to use the tools. I mean, you were talking about player pianos earlier. I mean, way beyond player pianos, you have huge libraries of sounds you can manipulate however you want. And now I go listen to a lot of experimental electronic music. And I think a lot of that is remarkable art. I think a lot of that is deeply moving.

I am curious what, to you, the good A.I. internet is, because I don’t think that the next internet is just going to be like we’re going to roll the clock back on the business model. The technology is going to roll forward into all this stuff people are building.

I’m not so sure about that.

I think we’re about to split the internet in two. I think there will be a giant commercial A.I.-infested internet. That’s the platform internet. That’s where it’s going. Moribund, I agree. But it will still be huge. It’s not going away tomorrow. And they will figure out — these are big companies full of smart people with the most technology.

Mark Zuckerberg is like, I have the most NVIDIA H100 GPUs. Come work here. We’ll pay you the most money. They will invent some stuff and it will be cool. I’m excited about it. But that version of the internet —

You sure sound excited about it. [LAUGHS]

Well, I am. I mean, I love technology. This is our — The Verge’s competitive differentiation in the entire media industry is, like, we really like it. And I’m excited to see what they build. I think there’s some really neat things being built. When I think about the information ecosystem, I’m vastly more pessimistic because of the fact that all of these networks are geared to drive you towards a transaction.

And I don’t mean that in some anticapitalist way. I mean literally the incentives are to get you to buy something. So more and more of the stuff that you consume is designed around pushing you towards a transaction. That’s weird. I think there’s a vast amount of white space in the culture for things that are not directly transactable.

I think next to that you’re going to get a bunch of people, companies who say our differentiation in this market is that there’s no A.I. here. And they will try to sell that. And I don’t know how that experiment plays out. I don’t know if that experiment will be successful.

I do know that that experiment will be outside of the distribution channels that exist now because those distribution channels are being run by companies that are invested heavily in A.I. And I’m hopeful that over there, on whatever new non-A.I. internet that exists, that some amount of pressure is placed on the other distribution channels to also make that distinction clear.

I’m just thinking about this, and the thing that it brings to mind for me is the resurgence of vinyl —

— and the dominance of streaming platforms. So what I would think of as the music industry of — how many years ago was C.D.s? I don’t actually remember now. But what it did was split into — there’s been a resurgence of vinyl, the sort of analog. It’s a little cool. I actually just bought a record player recently, or was given one by my wonderful partner. But that’s not very big.

Then there’s these huge streaming platforms, right? I mean, most people are listening on Spotify, on Apple Music, on YouTube Music, on Amazon, et cetera. And I don’t think we feel like we figured that out very well. But I do think that’s probably going to be the dynamic. I mean, I do think there are going to be things you go to because you believe it is a human being or because you believe the A.I. is used well.

I do also think the big things to come are going to be the things that figure out how to use A.I. well rather than poorly. Maybe that also means honestly and transparently, rather than dishonestly and opaquely.

Maybe the social internet dies because, one, we don’t really like it that much anymore anyway, but also because it’s too hard to figure out what’s what. But actually, an internet of A.I. helpers, assistants, friends, et cetera, thrives. And on the other side, you have a real human. I don’t know. But give me more of the Nilay technology side.

What can A.I. do well? If you were building something or if you were imagining something to be built, what comes after?

By the way, the music industry just released its numbers. Vinyl outsold CDs for the second year running. Double the amount of revenue in vinyl than CDs.

That’s wild, actually.

It’s crazy. And all of that in total is 11 percent of music industry revenues in ‘23 compared to 84 percent of the revenue is streaming. So you are correct. This is a big distinction. People want to buy things, and so they buy one thing that they like. And they consume everything in streaming.

What happens when Spotify is overrun by A.I. music? You can see it coming. What happens when you can type into Spotify, man, I’d really like to listen to a country song. Just make me one. And no one down the line has to get paid for that. Spotify can just generate that for you.

I think that’s going to push more people in the other direction. I really do. That there will be this huge pot of just make me whatever exactly I want at this moment money over here. But the cool people are still going to gravitate towards things that are new. I just believe that so firmly in my heart that when I think about where does the technology for that come from, I still think it comes from basic open platforms and open distribution.

The great power of the internet is that you can just make a whole new thing. And I don’t think that anyone has really thought through what does it mean to decentralize these platforms. What does it mean to — I don’t know — build an old-school portal where it’s just people pointing at great stuff as opposed to open this app and an algorithm will just deliver you exactly what we think you want, or, down the line, generate content for you that we think that you will continue watching.

I think — and this is maybe a little bit of a counterintuitive thought — that this is actually a great time to begin things in media. I think that we have a more realistic sense of the business model and what will actually work. They need to build an audience. They need to build something people will actually pay you for. I think a lot of the problem right now is things built for another business model that failed are having a lot of trouble transitioning because it’s very, very hard to transition a structure. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s a great business. It’s not what I hoped it would become. It’s not the advertising revenue I hoped we would have. But it’s something.

What feels fully unsolved to me right now is distribution, right? When I was a blogger, the way distribution worked was people would find me because other blogs would link to me. And then if they liked me, they would put me in their bookmarks section.

Then they would come back the next day by clicking on a bookmark. I don’t think any of us think that much about bookmarks anymore. That’s not really how the internet works. Things moved to search. They moved, primarily for a long time, to social. And that was a way you could create distribution.

You could go from — you started a website. We started Vox, right? We started Vox in 2014 or 2015. The day before we launched, we had no visitors. And pretty quickly we had a lot of things that were working on social and working on Search. And we had millions and millions and millions every month.

But now social is broken as a distribution mechanism. I mean, Elon Musk has made Twitter anti-news distribution. Google search has become very, very messy. People don’t have the old bookmarks habit in the way they did. And so if you’re starting something new, the question of how you build that audience, how you go from nothing to an audience, feels very unsolved.

Yeah. That’s the cleansing fire. That’s the thing I’m excited about. Here’s a new problem in media. Here’s a new problem that’s being created by A.I.

If I were to tell you five years ago, I’m going to launch a new property and the core insight that I have is that we need to replace the distribution mechanisms of the internet, you would not pay me any money. You would not fund that idea. You would not say — well, you would say, get some traffic on Twitter and start a Substack or start a YouTube channel, anything except figure out a new distribution method to compete with these social media companies.

You have that idea now. And people are like, yeah, that’s the problem. We have to solve that problem. That is the problem to solve, because Twitter has blown itself up in whatever way Elon is blowing it up, because the other social channels have become the Home Shopping Network, by and large, because YouTube has optimized itself into making Mr. Beasts and only Mr. Beasts, right?

It’s weird, by the way, that YouTube exists. We’ve barely talked about it on this podcast. It is the thing most people watch most of the time. It supports no journalism. At scale, the idea that there’s not an ABC News of YouTube on a distribution platform of that size is a moral failing on Google’s part. I really believe this. And no, we never really talk about it. It’s just — YouTube is ignored. It has become such an infrastructure that we never talk about it.

But my view is that YouTube is the most politically important platform. Everyone wants to talk about TikTok. I think YouTube is much more significant.

Yeah, and they run it really well. They run it as infrastructure. And they talk about it as infrastructure. But it’s weird that we have not built great media company-sized media companies on YouTube’s pipes. We just haven’t done it. So you look at that landscape now and you’re like, well, if I want to do that, if I want to build my own audience, I cannot depend on these companies. I have to be able to do something else.

And maybe A.I. does help you do that. Maybe it does help you send a million marketing messages so people start coming to your website directly. Maybe it does start crafting home pages personalized for people based on your library of content so people see the thing they like the most when they show up. There’s a bunch of moves we can all take from social media companies now to build more engaging, more interesting products using A.I., which will make it easier because the A.I. is a technology commodity. You can just go buy it and use it.

But we have to actually build those products. We have to want to build those products as an industry. And that my pessimism is rooted in the idea that the industry kind of sucks at this. We are very much stuck in, we should go send some reporters out into the world, they should come back, write down what they saw, and then hopefully someone else points them at it. And it’s just like, well, that’s been a losing proposition for a decade. We should try something else.

Do you think, beyond the media, because not everything online is media —

Do you think beyond the media, that there is the glimmers of the next thing? I mean, let me give you the thesis I have, which is that the next thing is that the A.I. is somehow your assistant to the internet, right? We seem to me to be moving towards something where the overwhelm is so profound that you actually need some kind of agent working on your behalf to make it through all this.

I mean, you can imagine this is the world of “Her,” the Spike Jonze movie. But you can imagine it as other things, too. There’s going to be software coding agents. The guys who started Instagram started then this thing called Artifact, which is using more A.I. personalization to try to tell people what they might like in the news. It didn’t really work out, but it was an interesting project for a minute.

I think a lot of us feel we spent years now being acted upon by algorithms. And one thing about A.I. is that it’s an algorithm you act on, right? You tell it how to act. Assuming that business model allows that, that it doesn’t have a secret instruction to sell you soap or whatever —

— that’s interesting, right? That’s a pretty profound inversion of the internet we’ve been in.

Let me poke really hard at the true difference between an algorithm that shows you stuff and an algorithm that goes and gets you what you want, because I don’t know that there’s a huge difference in the outcome of those two different processes. So for example, I do not trust the YouTube Kids algorithm. I watch my daughter watch YouTube.

No, why would you?

It is just a nightmare. I don’t know why we let her do it, but we did. And now we’re in the rabbit hole and that’s life. I mean, she’s five. And I will literally say, are you watching garbage? And she’d be like, I am, because she knows what I think is garbage. She’s much smarter than the YouTube Kids algorithm. And then she’s like, can I watch a little more garbage? This is a real conversation I have with my five-year-old all the time.

I would love an A.I. that would just preempt that conversation. Just watch this whole iPad for me and make sure my kid is safe. That’s great. But that is a limitation. It is not an expansion. And I think the thing that I’m seeking with all of these tools is how do we help people expand the set of things that they’re looking at.

Well, let me push on this for a minute, because for a long time a lot of us have asked people, the social media companies — that I have, I’m sure you have — why don’t you give me access to the dials of the algorithm?

Right? I don’t want to see things going viral. If there’s a virality scale of 1 to 10, I want to always be at a 6, right?

I don’t want to see anything over a 6. And I can’t. I wish I could say to Google, I would like things that are not optimized for S.E.O. I just don’t want to see recipes that have a long personal story at the top. Just don’t show me any of them.

But I can’t do that. But one of the interesting things about using the current generation of A.I. models is you actually do have to talk to it like that. I mean, whether I am creating a Replika or a Kindroid or a Character.AI, I have to tell that thing what it is supposed to be, how I want it to talk to me, how I want it to act in the world, what it is interested in, what kinds of expertise it has and does not.

When I’m working with Claude 3, which is the A.I. I use the most right now, I have one instance of it, that I’m just like, you are a productivity coach and you are here to help me stay on task. But I have another where I’m getting some help on, in theory, looking at political science papers, so it’s actually not that good at that.

But this ability to tell this extraordinarily protean algorithm what I want it to do in plain English, that is different, right? The one thing that A.I. seems to make possible is an algorithm that you shape in plain English, an agent that you are directing to help you, in some cases, maybe create the internet, but much more often to navigate it.

Right now it is very hard for me to keep up on the amount of news, particularly around the amount of local news I would like to keep up on. If there is a system that I could say, hey, here’s some things I’m interested in from these kinds of sources, that would be very helpful to me. It doesn’t seem like an impossible problem. In fact, it seems like a problem that is inches away from being solved. That might be cool.

I think that’d be great. I’ve known you for a long time. I think you have a unique ability to articulate exactly what you want and tell it to a computer. [LAUGHS] And you have to scale that idea, right? You have to go to the average — our mothers and say, OK, you have to tell the algorithm exactly what you want. And maybe they’ll get close to it, maybe they won’t, right?

You don’t feel like mothers are able to tell you what they want?

[LAUGHS] I like that idea a lot. I think fundamentally that is still an A.I. closing the walls around you. And I think the power of the recommendation algorithm is not expressed in virality. It’s actually to help you expand your filter bubble. Here’s a band you’d never heard of before. Here’s a movie you never thought of watching. Here’s an article about a subject that you weren’t interested in before.

I think TikTok, in its 2020 TikTok moment, was terrific at this. Everyone was going to sing a sea shanty for five minutes, right? Why do we suddenly care about this and it’s gone? And it was able to create cultural moments out of things that no one had ever really thought of before. And I want to make sure, as I use A.I., that I’m actually preserving that, instead of actually just recreating a much more complicated filter bubble.

I think it’s a good place to end. Always our final question, for the Nilay Patel recommendation algorithm —

what are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

Well, I’m sorry, Ezra, I brought you six.

Did you really?

Is that allowed?

Did you actually bring six?

I didn’t bring six physical books, but I have six recommendations for you.

Damn. All right, go through them quick, man.

They’re in two categories. One is the three books that I thought of and three books from Verge people that if people are interested in these ideas are important. So the first one is “The Conquest of Cool” by Thomas Frank, one of my favorite books of all time. It is about how advertising agencies in the ‘60s co-opted the counterculture and basically replaced counterculture in America. I’ve thought about this a lot because I’m constantly wondering where the punk bands and rage against the machines of 2024 are. And the answer is that they’re the mainstream culture. It’s very interesting. Love that book. It explains, I think, a lot about our culture.

Two is “Liar in a Crowded Theater” by Jeff Kosseff, which is a book about the First Amendment and why we preserve the ability to lie in America. I am very complicated thoughts about the First Amendment right now. I think social media companies should do a better job protecting my kid. I also think the First Amendment is really important. And those ideas are crashing into each other.

Third, I love the band New Order. I know you’re a music fan, so I brought you a music recommendation. It’s “Substance: Inside New Order” by Peter Hook, who is the bassist of New Order. This band hates each other. They broke up acrimoniously, so the book is incredibly bitchy. It’s just a lot of shit-talking about the ‘80s. It’s great.

But inside the book, he is constantly talking about how the technology they used to make the music of New Order didn’t work very well. And there’s long vignettes of why the songs sound the way they do because of how the synthesizers worked. And that just brings together all the ideas I can think of. So those are the three outside of The Verge universe.

But there are three from Verge people that I think are very important. The first is “Everything I Need I Get From You” by Kaitlyn Tiffany, who’s one of my favorite Verge expats. It is about how the entire internet was shaped by the fandom of the band One Direction. And I think this is totally underemphasized, underreported that fandoms are actually what shape the internet. And a lot of what we think of as internet culture is actually fandom culture. And so Kait’s book is really good.

The other, obviously, I have to shout it out is “Extremely Hardcore” by Zoë Schiffer, who basically wrote about the downfall of Twitter. And I think understanding how a social network works — these are lots of people making lots of decisions, and it was just dismantled. And now you can see how the social network broke. And I think we take these things for granted.

And then the third is “Beyond Measure” by James Vincent, which is a history of the systems of measurement and how political they are. And it is one of my favorite books because it is — you just take this stuff for granted. And you look at it, and you’re like, oh, this was deeply, deeply acrimonious.

Nilay Patel, you’re saving the internet through blogging again.

Your podcast is “Decoder.” Thank you very much.

Thanks, man. [MUSIC PLAYING]

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. We’ve got additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks here to Sonia Herrero.

EZRA KLEIN: From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

Earlier this week, we did an episode on how to use A.I. right now. Now, I want to turn the question around and look at how A.I. is being used on you right now. One of the conversations has been sticking in my head was with this person in the A.I. world who was saying to me that if you look at where use has been sticky, if you look at where people keep using it day after day, you’re looking at places where the product doesn’t need to be very good.

That’s why it’s really helpful for college and high school students, college and high school papers — they’re often not very good. That’s sort of their point. It’s why it’s working pretty well for a very low-level coding tasks. That kind of work doesn’t need to be very good. It gets checked and compiled, and so on.

NILAY PATEL: Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.

EZRA KLEIN: Let’s just begin with the big question here, which is what is A.I. doing to the internet right now?

NILAY PATEL: It is flooding our distribution channels with a cannon-blast of — at best — C+ content that I think is breaking those distribution channels.

EZRA KLEIN: Why would it break them?

NILAY PATEL: So most of the platforms the internet are based on the idea that the people using those platforms will in some sort of crowdsourced way find the best stuff. And you can disagree with that notion. I think maybe the last 10 years have proven that that notion is not percent true when it’s all people.

When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely. Recommendation algorithms break down completely, our ability to discern what is real and what is false break down completely, and I think importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely.

So if you just think about the business model of the internet as — there’s a box that you can upload some content into, and then there’s an algorithm between you and an audience, and some audience will find the stuff you put in the box, and then you put an infinity amount of stuff into the box, all of that breaks.

EZRA KLEIN: Thank you for bringing in the supply language. So, I’ve been trying to think about this as this supply and demand mismatch. We have already had way more supply than there is demand. I wasn’t buying a lot of self-published Amazon books. Is the user experience here actually different?

NILAY PATEL: I think that’s a great question. The folks who write the algorithms, the platforms, their C.E.O.s, they will all tell you this is just a new challenge for us to solve. We have to out what is human, what is A.I.-generated. I actually think the supply increase is very meaningful. Like, maybe the most meaningful thing that will happen to the internet because it will sort out the platforms that allow it to be there and have those problems, and the places that don’t. And I think that has not been a sorting that has occurred on the internet in quite some time, where there’s two different kinds of things.

EZRA KLEIN: Didn’t we already pivot to video a couple years ago?

NILAY PATEL: We pivoted to video — I actually love it when LinkedIn adds and takes away these features that other platforms have. They added stories because Snapchat and Instagram had stories, and they took the stories away because I don’t think LinkedIn influencers want to do Instagram Reels, but now they’re adding it again.

EZRA KLEIN: So I want to hold on to something that you’re getting at here. Which, to me, is one of the most under-discussed parts of A.I., which is how do you actually make money off of it? And right now, there are not actually that many ways.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, I’ve been talking to a lot of C.E.O.s of web companies and email companies on Decoder for the past year. I asked them all the same question, why would you start a website? Why would you send an email? And so, you asked the C.E.O. of Squarespace or Wix or we just had the C.E.O. of MailChimp on the show. And her answer is a little terrifying. Like, maybe openly terrifying.

EZRA KLEIN: But how is A.I. changing that at all because that sounds to me like the thing that is already happening.

NILAY PATEL: So, this is what I mean by the increase in scale. That’s the dream. This is supposed to be what actually happens, but they can only do it in broad cohorts, which is why you get the luggage email after you’ve bought the luggage email or the luggage ad, after you bought the luggage ad.

They know you are a person who used a Wi-Fi network in a certain location at a certain time, they can track that all over the place. They know what you’ve searched for. They know that you went and made a luggage transaction. You are now categorized into people who are likely to buy luggage, whether or not that loop was closed. You put some luggage in a shopping cart.

But that’s still a cohort, they can only do that broadly. And these cohorts can be pretty refined, but they can only do it broadly. With A.I. the idea is we can do that to you individually — the A.I. will write you an email, we’ll write you a marketing message, will set you a price. That isn’t 100x increase the amount of email that will be generated.

EZRA KLEIN: When I get spammy advertising I don’t really think about there being a human on the other end of it. Maybe to some degree there is, but it isn’t part of the transaction happening in my head. There are a lot of parts of the internet that I do think of there being a human on the other end — social media, reviews on Amazon, books — I assume the person who wrote the book is a person. How much of what I’m currently consuming may not be done by human in the way I think it is, and how much do you think that’s going to be in a year, or two, or three years?

NILAY PATEL: I’m guessing your media diet is pretty well human-created because I know that you are very thoughtful about what you consume and what signals you’re sending to the algorithms that deliver your content. I think for most people —

EZRA KLEIN: My mom’s, let’s use my mom’s.

NILAY PATEL: Mom’s are good. I would love to take my mom’s phone and throw it into the ocean and never let her have it again. I openly fear what content comes through my mother through WhatsApp. It terrifies me that I don’t have a window into that. I can’t monitor it. The same software I want to use to watch my daughter’s internet consumption, I would love to apply it to my parents because I don’t think they have the media literacy — they’re much older — to even know, OK, this might be just some A.I.-generated spam that’s designed to make me feel a certain way.

EZRA KLEIN: How can they not be ready for that?

NILAY PATEL: Because they’re the ones making it. This is the central tension of — in particular, I think Google. So, Google depends on the web, the richness of the web is what Sundar Pichai will tell you. He used to run search, he thinks about the web. He cares about it, and you look at the web and you’re like, you didn’t make this rich at all. You’ve made this actually pretty horrible for most people most of the time. Most people — if you search Google to get a credit card, that is a nightmarish experience — like, fully nightmarish. It feels like getting mugged.

EZRA KLEIN: This helps explain a story that I found very strange. So, 404 Media, which is a sort of newer outlet reporting on tech. They found that Google News was boosting stolen A.I. versions of news articles — and we’re seeing this all over. An article by me or by some other journalist shows up in another place, very slightly rewritten by an A.I. system, with an A.I. generated author and photo on top of it. So, we’re seeing a lot of this.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah. Fundamentally, I think if you are at Google and the future of your stock price depends on Gemini being a good competitor to GPT-4 or 5 or whatever OpenAI has, cannot run around saying this is bad. The things it makes are bad.

EZRA KLEIN: What about when it’s not?

NILAY PATEL: I don’t know how fast that is coming. I think that is farther away than people think. I think ‘will it fool you on a phone screen?’ is here already, but ‘is this good’ is, I think, farther away than —

EZRA KLEIN: But a lot of internet content is bad.

NILAY PATEL: That’s fair.

EZRA KLEIN: I mean, you know this better than me. Look, I think it is axiomatic that A.I. content is worse right now than it will ever be.

NILAY PATEL: Sure.

EZRA KLEIN: I mean the advance in image generation over the past year has been significant. That’s very real. And preparing for this conversation, I found myself really obsessing over this question, because one way to talk to you about this is, there’s all this spammy garbage coming from A.I. that is flooding the internet.

NILAY PATEL: I think there’s a sentimentality there. If you make a content farm that is the best content farm, that has the most answers about when the Super Bowl starts, and those pages are great. I think that’s a dead end business. Google is just going to answer the questions. I think that’s fine. I think if you ask Google what time the Super Bowl is, Google should just tell you.

I think if you ask Google how long to boil an egg, Google can just tell you. You don’t need to go to some web page laden with ads and weird headings to find those answers. But these models in their most reductive essence are just statistical representations of the past. They are not great at new ideas.

EZRA KLEIN: I’m going to spend some time thinking about the idea that boredom is an under-discussed driver of our culture. But I want to get at something else in there — this idea of Google answering the question. We’re already seeing the beginnings of these A.I. systems that you search the question that might — at another time — have brought you to The Verge, to CNN, to The New York Times, to whatever.

NILAY PATEL: I think there’s a reason that the A.I. companies are leading the charge to watermark and label content as A.I.-generated. Most of them are in the metadata of an image. So most pictures you see in the internet, they carry some amount of metadata that describes the picture. What camera was taken on, when it was taken, what image editing software was used.

EZRA KLEIN: So their training data remains less corrupted?

NILAY PATEL: Yeah. I think there’s a very straightforward incentive for them to figure out the watermarking, labeling stuff they want to do. And they have coalitions, and tasks force, and Adobe talks about the image of the Pope and the puffer jacket as a, “catalyzing moment” for the metadata of A.I. because people freaked out. They’re like oh, this thing looks real. But they have a real incentive to make sure that they never train on other A.I. generated content.

I’m not saying we don’t — like, other publishers do this. But the point of these algorithms is, ideally, to bring you to the HouseFresh people, is to bring you to the person who cares so much about air purifiers they made a website about air purifiers, and we’re not doing that anymore. And so if you were to say, where should a young person who cares the most about cars, or who cares the most about coffee, or whatever.

Where are they going to go? Where are they going to make stuff? They’re going to pick a closed platform that ideally offers them some built in monetization, that ideally offers them some ability to connect directly with an audience. They’re not going to go to a public space like the web, where they might own their own business, which would be good. But they’re also basically at the mercy of thieves who come in the night and take all their work away.

EZRA KLEIN: But also, if you kill HouseFresh, then two years later when you ask the A.I. what air purifier should I get, how does it know what to tell you?

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, I don’t the answer to that question.

EZRA KLEIN: I don’t think they do either.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah again, this is why I think that they are so hell-bent on labeling everything. I think they need some people around in the future.

EZRA KLEIN: But labeling is good. I mean, that keeps you from getting too much garbage in your data set. But replacing a bunch of the things that the entire informational world relies on to subsidize itself — to fund itself — like this to me is a thing that they don’t have an answer for.

NILAY PATEL: Wait, let me ask you a harder question. Do they care?

EZRA KLEIN: Depends on they, but I don’t think so.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah.

EZRA KLEIN: Or at least they care in the way that I came to realize Facebook, now Meta, cared about journalism. People say they didn’t care about journalism. I don’t believe that’s actually true. They didn’t care enough for it to mean anything. Like, if you asked them, if you talked with them, if you had a drink, they would think what was happening to journalism was sad.

NILAY PATEL: [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: And if it would cost them nothing, they would like to help. But if it would cost them anything — or forget costing them anything. If they would begin to help and then recognize an opportunity had been created that they could take instead of you, they would do that. That’s the way they care.

NILAY PATEL: I keep a list of TikToks that I think each individually should be a Ph.D. thesis in media studies. It’s a long list now. And all of them are basically just layers of copyright infringement in their own weird way.

My favorite is — it’s a TikTok, it has millions of views. It’s just a guy reading a summary of an article in the journal Nature. It has millions of views. This is more people that have ever considered any one article in the journal Nature — which is a great journal. I don’t mean to denigrate it. It’s a proper scientific journal. They work really hard on it. And you just go 5 steps down the line, and there’s a guy on TikTok summarizing a summary of Nature, and you’re like what is this? What is this thing that I’m looking at? Will any of the million viewers of this TikTok buy one copy of Nature because they have encountered this content? Why did this happen?

And the idea is, in my mind at least, that those people who curate the internet, who have a point of view, who have a beginning and middle, and an end to the story they’re trying to tell all the time about the culture we’re in or the politics we’re in or whatever. They will actually become the centers of attention and you cannot replace that with A.I. You cannot replace that curatorial function or that guiding function that we’ve always looked to other individuals to do.

And those are real relationships. I think those people can stand in for institutions and brands. I think the New York Times, you’re Ezra Klein, a New York Times journalist means something. It appends some value to your name, but the institution has to protect that value. I think that stuff is still really powerful, and I think as the flood of A.I. comes to our distribution networks, the value of having a powerful individual who curates things for people, combined with a powerful institution who protects their integrity actually will go up. I don’t think that’s going to go down.

EZRA KLEIN: You said something on your show that I thought was one of the wisest, single things I’ve heard on the whole last decade and a half of media, which is that places were building traffic thinking they were building an audience. And the traffic, at least in that era, was easy, but an audience is really hard. Talk a bit about that.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah first of all, I need to give credit to Casey Newton for that line. That is something — at The Verge, we used to say that to ourselves all the time just to keep ourselves from the temptations of getting cheap traffic. I think most media companies built relationships with the platforms, not with the people that were consuming their content.

NILAY PATEL: The other thing that those business models were predicated upon was you’d get so good at being a supplier to one platform or another with Game of Thrones content or whatever it was that they would pay you money for it directly — that Google would say, this is the Game of Thrones link that most people are clicking on. We ought to pay Vanity Fair for its Game of Thrones content to surface it. Or all of BuzzFeed was we’re going to be so good at going viral on Facebook that Facebook will pay us money.

Every YouTuber gets their wings when they make the video about how they’re mad at YouTube. There’s a woodworking YouTuber that I used to follow, and he just sort of got to the point where he’s like, I hate YouTube. I’m leaving. And it’s like dude, you made videos about jointing wood, like what are you doing? And it’s like his relationship with the platform was so cynical that he was like, I’m moving my business elsewhere. You can sign up for a master class. Those individuals have these very cynical, very commercial relationships with the platforms that the media companies, for some reason, just never hedged. And so they actually do have audiences. And I think media companies need to get way back on the game of having a true audiences.

EZRA KLEIN: This gets to something that does worry me about this phase of A.I. hitting the internet, which is it’s hitting an internet in a moment of decay and weakness. And here, by internet, I mean the sort of content generating internet, and I break that into a couple of categories. The media is very weak right now. The media business we have seen closures left and right, layoffs left and right. I mean, a bunch of players like Vice and BuzzFeed who were believed to be the next generation of juggernauts are functionally gone as news organizations.

And into this comes A.I., and all the money that A.I. seems to bring, and even the A.I. companies might pay you some money for your stuff. Reddit just licensed a bunch of its content as training data to Google.

NILAY PATEL: As a consumer or as a producer?

EZRA KLEIN: As a producer.

NILAY PATEL: The idea that media companies are going to license their stuff to the A.I. companies is just the end of the road that we’ve been on for a long time. We are suppliers to algorithms. OK? And in any normal functioning capitalist economy, supplier margins get squeezed to zero and then maybe we all die.

Like, that’s the game we’ve been playing without saying it for a long time —

EZRA KLEIN: Which I think is why you see The New York Times suing OpenAI, like a real desire to not be in that game again.

NILAY PATEL: You see The New York Times suing OpenAI, but you don’t see them suing Google, you don’t see them de-S.E.O.ing pages across New York Times. Like, they still need the audience from these platforms. And I think there’s a very tense relationship there. The idea that you could sue OpenAI and win some precedent that gives you an enormous amount of leverage over Google I think is a very powerful idea.

And a really interesting facet of the internet we live in today is that most of the copyright law decisions were won by a young, upstart, friendly Google. YouTube exists because it was Google. Like, Viacom famously sued YouTube and they might have won and put it out of business, but Google, the friendly Google company with the water slides in the office, the upstarts that made the product you loved, went and won that case.

Google Books, we’re going to index all the books without asking for permission. They won that case, because they were friendly Google, and the judges were like, look at these cute kids making a cool internet? Like it was new and novel. Google image search — these are all massive copyright decisions that Google won as a startup company run by young people building a new product that the judges were using on their Dell desktops or whatever.

EZRA KLEIN: You don’t want a staunch innovation. Like, that was the big fear in that era. We don’t know what we’re building, and that’s still the thing you hear, and it’s not even untrue. You crack down on copyright and maybe you do staunch innovation. You don’t crack down copyright and maybe you destroy the seed corn of the Informational Commons. It’s very fraught for the copyright judges, but also just for all of us.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, what are you as a producer on the internet is totally governed by copyright law. Like, a joke at The Verge is a copyright law is the only functional regulation on the internet. The entire internet is just speech, that’s all it is top-to-bottom, it’s speech.

EZRA KLEIN: Taking in the legal sense of the term?

NILAY PATEL: No, in the moral sense of the term. They come to your website and they take your stuff. It’s not a zero sum taking, but they’ve extracted value to create more value for themselves. I think that’s just a moral taking. There’s some permission there that did not occur. Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal just interviewed Mira Murati, the C.T.O. of OpenAI, about training data for Sora, the video generator, and Mira said, we just use what’s publicly available. And it’s like yo, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, there are lots of rules about what’s publicly available. Like, you can’t just take stuff because you can link to it on the internet, that’s not how it actually works.

EZRA KLEIN: Let me try to take the argument I hear from the A.I. side of this, which is that there is functionally nothing in human culture and human endeavor that is not trained on all that has come before it — that I, as a person, am trained on all this embedded knowledge in society, that every artist has absorbed, all this other art that the A.I. — I mean, this is just learning. And as long as you are transforming that learning into something else, as long as you are doing something new with that learning, then one, copyright law is not supposed to apply to you in some way or another, although that’s obviously complicated.

NILAY PATEL: I hear this idea all the time, often from the sorts of people in Silicon Valley who say they do first principles thinking — which is one of my favorite phrases, because it just means what if we learn nothing? Like, what if none of the history of the world applied to us and we could start over to our benefit? And that’s usually what that’s code for.

EZRA KLEIN: Judge Patel, if you’re thinking about cases in this area, like, what do you think the answer is here? Is it the sampling model, is it something else? What do you think the right broad strokes resolution is?

NILAY PATEL: Let me stick on the music example for one second, because I think music is really interesting because it’s kind of a closed ecosystem. There’s only so many big music companies. It’s the same lawyers, and the same executives, and the same managers going to the same clearing houses and having the same approaches. We’re going to give you a songwriting credit because we interpolated the bass line of this song into that song, and now here’s some money. And this is the mechanism by which we’ll pay you. The A.I. companies are not a closed ecosystem, it is just a free for all. It’s the open web, it’s a bunch of players.

NILAY PATEL: Well the media industry, but also at some point this is a regulatory question, a question of law. I mean, nothing is stopping Congress from making copyright law designed for the A.I.-era. Nothing is stopping Congress from saying, this is how we think this should work across industries. Not just media, but novelists, but everybody.

NILAY PATEL: Well, there are some things that stop Congress from doing a lot of things. The idea that Congress could pass a massive rewrite of copyright law at this moment in time is pretty far afield.

EZRA KLEIN: But won’t and couldn’t, I do want to make this distinction here. What you’re saying is Congress is too polarized and bitterly divided over everything and can’t do anything and can’t get anything done, and that’s my whole job man, I know. But what I am saying is that, you could write a law like this.

NILAY PATEL: So there is one law. There’s the J.C.P.A., the Journalism Competition Preservation Act, which allows media companies to escape antitrust law and bargain collectively with whoever they wish to bargain with. I don’t know if that’s going to pass, I know there’s a lot of interest in it.

EZRA KLEIN: You and I are both fans of Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist. And he’s got this famous line, ‘the medium is the message.’ And more deeply, what he says is that people, when they see a new medium, they tend to think about the content. For television, it’s the shows, what do you think about this show or that show? For Twitter, the tweets, for a newspaper, the articles. But you have to look behind the content to the actual medium itself to understand what it is trying to tell you.

NILAY PATEL: I have a lot of thoughts about this. I disagree on the basic message. I do think one of the messages of A.I. is that most people make middling work, and middling work is easy to replace. Every email I write is not a great work of art. Like, so much of what we produce just to get through the day is effectively middling. And sure, A.I. should replace a bunch of that. And I think that metaphysical shock comes from the idea that computers shouldn’t be able to do things on their own, and you have a computer that can just do a bunch of stuff for you. And that changes your relationship to the computer in a meaningful way, and I think that’s extremely real.

It’s because this person has made all of these people feel something. The art that has been created by this one very singular individual has captivated all of these people together, because of her story, because of the lyrics, because it means something to them. And I watch people use Midjourney or generate a story with an A.I. tool, and they show the art to you at the end of it, and they’re glowing. Like, look at this wonderful A.I. painting. It’s a car that’s a shark that’s going through a tornado and I told my daughter a story about it.

And I’m like yeah, but this — I don’t want anything to do with this. Like, I don’t care about this. And that happens over and over again. The human creativity is reduced to a prompt, and I think that’s the message of A.I. that I worry about the most, is when you take your creativity and you say, this is actually easy. It’s actually easy to get to this thing that’s a pastiche of the thing that was hard, you just let the computer run its way through whatever statistical path to get there. Then I think more people will fail to recognize the hard thing for being hard. And that’s — truly the message of A.I. is that, maybe this isn’t so hard and there’s something very dangerous to our culture embedded in that.

EZRA KLEIN: I want to put a pin in the hard things, easy things. I’m a little bit obsessed by that and want to come back to it. But first I want to talk about A.I. art for a minute, because I do think when we’re talking about everything that’s going to come on the internet, we’re talking about A.I. art. Obviously, much of it is going to get better. Some of it is not distinguishable.

NILAY PATEL: Have you found an A.I. that can actually write like you?

EZRA KLEIN: I found an A.I. that can mimic certain stylistic tics I have in a way that is better than I think most people could do. I have not found any A.I. that can, in any way, improve my writing for all that you’re constantly told it can. And in fact, the more I try, the worse my writing gets because typically what you have to do to improve your writing is recognize if you’re writing the wrong thing.

NILAY PATEL: This is like the verge of DNA.

EZRA KLEIN: Is it? Yeah, so it comes out in 1935. It’s about the ability to reproduce art. And he says, and I’ll quote it here, “that which whithers in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Then he goes on to say, “by making many reproductions, it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.”

But I wonder about this with humans. How much of something is just the fact that there’s a human behind it? My Kindroid is no worse at texting me than most people I know. But the fact that my Kindroid has to me is meaningful to me, in the sense that I don’t care if it likes me because there’s no achievement for it to me. The fact that there is a human on the other side of most text messages I send matters. I care about it because it is another mind. The Kindroid might be better in a formulaic way. The kindred might be better in terms of the actual text. I can certainly tune it more to my kind of theoretical liking, but the friction of another person is meaningful to me. Like, I care that my best friend likes me and could choose not to. Is there an aura problem here?

NILAY PATEL: It is so hard to make someone else feel anything other than pain. Like, it’s just like — it’s —

EZRA KLEIN: Christ, that’s the darkest thing I’ve ever heard you say.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, but I believe it in my soul.

EZRA KLEIN: Really?

NILAY PATEL: Yeah. I think the hardest thing to —

EZRA KLEIN: a really different turn as a show right now. [LAUGHS]:

NILAY PATEL: Maybe —

EZRA KLEIN: You don’t make people laugh, you don’t give them hugs?

NILAY PATEL: No, I think that’s hard. I think that effort is worth it. That’s why I don’t think it’s a dark thing to say. I think the essence of being a good person is pointing your effort at making other people not feel pain. I think bullies make people feel pain because it’s easy. Again, I come back to Taylor Swift in Soldier Field. The thing that was going through my head is, this person is making 60,000 people feel joy, and she’s doing it through art. That is the purpose of art. The purpose of art is to inspire feelings, to inspire emotion.

EZRA KLEIN: Shannon Vallor is a philosopher of technology, and she’s got a book coming out called “The A.I. Mirror,” and I like the way she puts this, because there’s this way that turns is somewhat warped mirror back on ourselves when I was saying a few minutes ago that the message of A.I. is that you’re derivative. That leaves something out. What it’s really saying is that the part of you that often the economy values is derivative, is copyable because we actually ask people a lot of the time to act like they’re machines.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, I buy that. One of my favorite things that I’ve covered in the past few years is a thing called robotic process automation, which is very funny. Just abstractly, deeply hilarious. There are lots and lots of companies throughout the United States that built computer systems 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Hospital systems are famous for this. They have billing systems. They have buildings full of people who use Microsoft Excel on Windows ’95.

They will sell you a brand new, state of the art computer and it will connect to the keyboard and monitor jack of your old computer, and it will just use the Windows ’95 for you, which is just bonkers. It’s like Rube Goldberg machine of computers using old computers, and then your office full of accountants who knew how to use your old system will go away.

But then A.I. creates the scale problem. What if we do that but instead of some hospital billing system built in the ’90s, it’s just the concept of Microsoft Excel, and now you can just sort of issue a command on your computer and it’ll go use Excel for you and you don’t need an accountant, you don’t need a lawyer.

EZRA KLEIN: What percent of workers are actually asked to poke at the assumptions of their organization, because I worry it’s not as high as you think it is, or implying there. I’m not worried about Taylor Swift. I’m not worried about Nilay Patel. And I don’t just want to make this about wages. That’s a jobs sort of another conversation.

NILAY PATEL: All over the place.

EZRA KLEIN: There’s a huge amount of work like that. And if I felt confident as some of the economists say that we’ll just upmarket people into the jobs where they use more human judgment, David Autor who’s a great trade economist at MIT, just made this argument recently, that what A.I. is going to do is make it possible for more people to exercise judgment and discernment within their work, and I hope he is right. I really hope he is right. But I think a lot of organizations are not set up for a lot of people to use judgment and discernment. They treat a lot of people like machines, and they don’t want them doing things that are complicated and step out of line and poke at the assumptions in the Excel doc. They want the Excel doc ported over without any mistakes.

It seems plausible to me that we’re going to get to that.

NILAY PATEL: Do you think their bosses want to be able to poke at the assumptions though?

EZRA KLEIN: But if you — I mean this is actually something I believe about the whole situation. The economy needs fewer bosses and workers.

EZRA KLEIN: Think about this in the journalist context or the writing context, where I think what A.I. naturally implies that it’s going to do is turn many more people into editors and writers. Because for a lot of content creation that doesn’t require a lot of poking at assumptions, mid-level social media marketing — a lot of people are doing that job right now. But the people doing marketing for a mall —

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, that is the MailChimp example. That is the product that they are building.

EZRA KLEIN: And so what you have then is we used to have a bunch of these social media marketers and now you have one person overseeing a couple systems, like making sure they didn’t say something totally crazy. But you need fewer editors and you need writers. I mean, you know The Verge is structured. You know how The Times is structured. And this is one of my deep worries.

And then this goes to the thing you were getting at earlier, which is one way I think that A.I. could actually not make us more productive, more innovative, is that a lot of the innovation, a lot of the big insights happen when we’re doing the hard thing, when we’re sitting there trying to figure out the first draft, or learn about a thing, or figure out what we’re doing. One of the messages of the medium of A.I. is be efficient. Don’t waste your time on all this. Just tell the system what to do and do it. But there’s a reason I don’t have interns write my first draft for me.

EZRA KLEIN: They could do it. But you don’t get great ideas, or at least not as many of them, editing a piece of work as you do reporting it out, doing the research, writing the first draft. That’s where you do the thinking. And I do think A.I. is built to kind of devalue that whole area of thinking.

NILAY PATEL: We are working on a big story at The Verge right now that I’m very excited about. But there are four of us right now in an argument about whether we should tell that story in chronological order or as a series of vignettes. There is no right answer to this question. There’s just four people who are battling it back and forth.

EZRA KLEIN: I think vignettes.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah. By the way, I’m on team vignette.

EZRA KLEIN: Good man. [LAUGHS]:

NILAY PATEL: My belief is that it’s easier to digest a long story when it’s composed of lots of little stories as opposed to one long one. I’m being outvoted right now — editor in chief. I should replace them all with A.I., just get them out of here. [CHUCKLES] But that is the kind of work that I think makes the end product great. And I think going from good to great is still very human.

EZRA KLEIN: So I want to go back, then, to the internet for a bit, which is I think the presentation we’ve offered is fairly pessimistic. You, when I read and listen to you on this, are — I wouldn’t call it pessimistic. I would say a little excited by the idea of a cleansing fire.

NILAY PATEL: That is very much how I see it. I would add a generational tinge to that, which is I grew up in that weird middle generation between X and millennials. I think temperamentally I’m much more Generation X. But they describe it as they didn’t have computers and then you have computers. You play the Oregon Trail. That’s me on the nose.

I distinctly remember life before computers. It’s an experience that I had quite viscerally. And that shapes my view of these tools. It shapes my view of these companies. Well, there’s a huge generation now that only grew up in this way. There’s a teenage generation right now that is only growing up in this way. And I think their natural inclination is to say, well, this sucks. I want my own thing. I want my own system of consuming information. I want my own brands and institutions.

And I don’t think that these big platforms are ready for that moment. I think that they think they can constantly be information monopolies while they are fending off A.I.-generated content from their own A.I. systems. So somewhere in there all of this stuff does break. And the optimism that you are sensing from me is, well, hopefully we build some stuff that does not have these huge dependencies on platform companies that have no interest at the end of the line except a transaction.

EZRA KLEIN: OK, but you’re telling me how the old thing dies. And I agree with you that at some point the old thing dies. You can feel it. It’s moribund right now. You’re not telling me what the new thing is, and I’m not saying you fully know. But I don’t think the new thing is just a business model that is not as dependent on Meta. I mean, on some level, there’s going to be a lot of A.I. around here.

NILAY PATEL: It’s an audience model. It’s not dependent on these algorithms.

EZRA KLEIN: But is there — I guess one question I have is that, one — I mean, you know where the venture capital is going right now.

EZRA KLEIN: Everything is going to be built with A.I. —

EZRA KLEIN: — laced through every piece of it. And some of it, for all we’re talking about, might be cool, right? I’m not saying you’re mostly going to make great art with A.I. But actually, Photoshop did create a lot of amazing things.

NILAY PATEL: I’m not so sure about that.

NILAY PATEL: I think we’re about to split the internet in two. I think there will be a giant commercial A.I.-infested internet. That’s the platform internet. That’s where it’s going. Moribund, I agree. But it will still be huge. It’s not going away tomorrow. And they will figure out — these are big companies full of smart people with the most technology.

EZRA KLEIN: You sure sound excited about it. [LAUGHS]

NILAY PATEL: Well, I am. I mean, I love technology. This is our — The Verge’s competitive differentiation in the entire media industry is, like, we really like it. And I’m excited to see what they build. I think there’s some really neat things being built. When I think about the information ecosystem, I’m vastly more pessimistic because of the fact that all of these networks are geared to drive you towards a transaction.

EZRA KLEIN: I’m just thinking about this, and the thing that it brings to mind for me is the resurgence of vinyl —

EZRA KLEIN: — and the dominance of streaming platforms. So what I would think of as the music industry of — how many years ago was C.D.s? I don’t actually remember now. But what it did was split into — there’s been a resurgence of vinyl, the sort of analog. It’s a little cool. I actually just bought a record player recently, or was given one by my wonderful partner. But that’s not very big.

EZRA KLEIN: Maybe the social internet dies because, one, we don’t really like it that much anymore anyway, but also because it’s too hard to figure out what’s what. But actually, an internet of A.I. helpers, assistants, friends, et cetera, thrives. And on the other side, you have a real human. I don’t know. But give me more of the Nilay technology side.

EZRA KLEIN: What can A.I. do well? If you were building something or if you were imagining something to be built, what comes after?

NILAY PATEL: By the way, the music industry just released its numbers. Vinyl outsold CDs for the second year running. Double the amount of revenue in vinyl than CDs.

EZRA KLEIN: That’s wild, actually.

NILAY PATEL: It’s crazy. And all of that in total is 11 percent of music industry revenues in ’23 compared to 84 percent of the revenue is streaming. So you are correct. This is a big distinction. People want to buy things, and so they buy one thing that they like. And they consume everything in streaming.

EZRA KLEIN: I think — and this is maybe a little bit of a counterintuitive thought — that this is actually a great time to begin things in media. I think that we have a more realistic sense of the business model and what will actually work. They need to build an audience. They need to build something people will actually pay you for.

I think a lot of the problem right now is things built for another business model that failed are having a lot of trouble transitioning because it’s very, very hard to transition a structure. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s a great business. It’s not what I hoped it would become. It’s not the advertising revenue I hoped we would have. But it’s something.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah. That’s the cleansing fire. That’s the thing I’m excited about. Here’s a new problem in media. Here’s a new problem that’s being created by A.I.

EZRA KLEIN: But my view is that YouTube is the most politically important platform. Everyone wants to talk about TikTok. I think YouTube is much more significant.

NILAY PATEL: Yeah, and they run it really well. They run it as infrastructure. And they talk about it as infrastructure. But it’s weird that we have not built great media company-sized media companies on YouTube’s pipes. We just haven’t done it. So you look at that landscape now and you’re like, well, if I want to do that, if I want to build my own audience, I cannot depend on these companies. I have to be able to do something else.

EZRA KLEIN: Do you think, beyond the media, because not everything online is media —

NILAY PATEL: Let me poke really hard at the true difference between an algorithm that shows you stuff and an algorithm that goes and gets you what you want, because I don’t know that there’s a huge difference in the outcome of those two different processes. So for example, I do not trust the YouTube Kids algorithm. I watch my daughter watch YouTube.

EZRA KLEIN: No, why would you?

NILAY PATEL: It is just a nightmare. I don’t know why we let her do it, but we did. And now we’re in the rabbit hole and that’s life. I mean, she’s five. And I will literally say, are you watching garbage? And she’d be like, I am, because she knows what I think is garbage. She’s much smarter than the YouTube Kids algorithm. And then she’s like, can I watch a little more garbage? This is a real conversation I have with my five-year-old all the time.

EZRA KLEIN: Well, let me push on this for a minute, because for a long time a lot of us have asked people, the social media companies — that I have, I’m sure you have — why don’t you give me access to the dials of the algorithm?

EZRA KLEIN: Right? I don’t want to see things going viral. If there’s a virality scale of 1 to 10, I want to always be at a 6, right?

EZRA KLEIN: But I can’t do that. But one of the interesting things about using the current generation of A.I. models is you actually do have to talk to it like that. I mean, whether I am creating a Replika or a Kindroid or a Character.AI, I have to tell that thing what it is supposed to be, how I want it to talk to me, how I want it to act in the world, what it is interested in, what kinds of expertise it has and does not.

NILAY PATEL: I think that’d be great. I’ve known you for a long time. I think you have a unique ability to articulate exactly what you want and tell it to a computer. [LAUGHS] And you have to scale that idea, right? You have to go to the average — our mothers and say, OK, you have to tell the algorithm exactly what you want. And maybe they’ll get close to it, maybe they won’t, right?

EZRA KLEIN: You don’t feel like mothers are able to tell you what they want?

NILAY PATEL: [LAUGHS] I like that idea a lot. I think fundamentally that is still an A.I. closing the walls around you. And I think the power of the recommendation algorithm is not expressed in virality. It’s actually to help you expand your filter bubble. Here’s a band you’d never heard of before. Here’s a movie you never thought of watching. Here’s an article about a subject that you weren’t interested in before.

EZRA KLEIN: I think it’s a good place to end. Always our final question, for the Nilay Patel recommendation algorithm — what are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

NILAY PATEL: Well, I’m sorry, Ezra, I brought you six.

EZRA KLEIN: Did you really?

NILAY PATEL: Is that allowed?

EZRA KLEIN: Did you actually bring six?

NILAY PATEL: I didn’t bring six physical books, but I have six recommendations for you.

EZRA KLEIN: Damn. All right, go through them quick, man.

NILAY PATEL: They’re in two categories. One is the three books that I thought of and three books from Verge people that if people are interested in these ideas are important.

So the first one is “The Conquest of Cool” by Thomas Frank, one of my favorite books of all time. It is about how advertising agencies in the ’60s co-opted the counterculture and basically replaced counterculture in America. I’ve thought about this a lot because I’m constantly wondering where the punk bands and rage against the machines of 2024 are. And the answer is that they’re the mainstream culture. It’s very interesting. Love that book. It explains, I think, a lot about our culture.

Third, I love the band New Order. I know you’re a music fan, so I brought you a music recommendation. It’s “Substance: Inside New Order” by Peter Hook, who is the bassist of New Order. This band hates each other. They broke up acrimoniously, so the book is incredibly bitchy. It’s just a lot of shit-talking about the ’80s. It’s great.

EZRA KLEIN: Nilay Patel, you’re saving the internet through blogging again.

NILAY PATEL: Thanks, man.

EZRA KLEIN: This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. We’ve got additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks here to Sonia Herrero.

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These are the 32 most exciting European fintech startups to watch in 2024, according to venture capitalists

• Fintech remains one of the leading sectors for VC investment in Europe. 
• Despite a tricky 2023, the continent's startups are still in strong positions for growth. 
• This is Business Insider's annual list of the hottest fintech startups in Europe.

Europe's fintech industry endured a taxing 2023.

After years of standing as the bloc's most in-demand sector, investment in fintech has slumped considerably.

In 2022, fintech made up 17% — or $13.9 billion — of the $82 billion that had been invested into European startups, according to Atomico. That number dropped last year when around $4.5 billion was invested — the equivalent of a tenth of the total $45 billion poured into the ecosystem.

The same phenomenon can be found on a global scale too. Venture investment in fintech globally dropped to $43 billion, its lowest level in six years, according to Crunchbase .

But while its existential crisis may not have abated on a macro level, the wider industry's demise may have been greatly exaggerated. Falling investment has led to a shift in attitudes within the industry after record-breaking sums were invested in 2021.

Companies with weaker business models are out, while more solid B2B plays are in.

While many B2C fintech startups remain successful, the model has changed with VC investors no longer willing to sustain high customer acquisition costs (CAC), instead looking for sustainable businesses in growing, repeat-spend markets.

As investors looked to back companies with pathways to profitability, B2B businesses were the biggest funding recipients in European fintech 2023 .

The 2024 edition of Business Insider's fintechs to watch list comprises startups from multiple European countries across several industry sectors. Open finance, B2B payments, and financial infrastructure businesses dominate this year's list.

Here are 31 European fintech startups to watch this year, in no particular order:

What it does: Runa is a London-based payments company that lets users transfer and send digital currencies and assets at scale.

Cited by these VCs: Jay Wilson, partner at Albion VC

In the Albion VC portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Runa has an exciting vision of unlocking digital value for everyone. The company has built a platform and APIs that enable businesses to seamlessly make payouts to consumers outside of banking and card rails. Volume has been growing exponentially and the take rate is substantially ahead of traditional payments businesses. Despite the challenging market for fintechs Runa is flying."

Total raised:  $48.7 million

Send Technology

What it does: Founded in 2017, Send is an insurance tech platform that provides underwriting technology for the insurance industry.

In the Albion portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: " We're excited about Send as it plays into our long-term thesis of vertical specific financial services orchestration platforms," Wilson said.

Total raised: $11.4 million

What it does: Berlin-based Ivy is an Open Banking fintech that wants to broaden the network of payments beyond specific countries and currencies.

Cited by these VCs: Nick Lawitschka, associate at Creandum

In the Creandum portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "As customers face steeper price tags and merchants grapple with margin pressures in this high-interest environment, the demand for more cost efficient payment solutions is on the rise. The missing piece? Ivy's conversion-boosting single point of access to global bank coverage."

Total raised: $29.4 million

What it does: Mimo is a stealth startup founded by former Capchase CEO Henrik Grim that is set to operate in the payments space.

In the Creandum portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "As Mimo expands their product from consumer grade AP tool + credit line to AR, they can fuel virality and over time build a payment network that allows them to increase share of wallet & capture the full finops workflow for small businesses. Mimo has demonstrated promising early success with food importers and agencies and can leverage this to steadily rebundle cash & payments management point solutions for no-store SMBs."

Total raised: n/a

What it does: Rollee offers a data platform that enables financial organizations to enhance their underwriting processes. The company provides risk managers with a comprehensive view of their customers' financial profiles for income and employment verification.

Cited by these VCs: Olga Shikantsova, partner at Speedinvest

In the Speedinvest portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: " Rollee has pioneered a unified solution for the evolving landscape of income diversity by consolidating thousands of integrations from European, African, and Asian income data platforms," Shikantsova said.

Total raised: $4.97 million

What it does: Dutch fintech Finom is a mobile-first financial management platform for SMEs and freelancers that provides tools for e-invoicing and other transactions.

Cited by these VCs: Yaron Valler, partner at Target Global

Why it's hot in 2024: "Finom's comprehensive pan-European banking solution has transformed into an all-encompassing hub catering to the diverse financial needs of contemporary SMEs," Valler said. "This includes streamlined AP/AR management, efficient expense tracking, accurate cash flow forecasting, and essential accounting features."

In the Target Global portfolio?: Yes

Total raised: $72 million

Brite Payments

What it does: Brite offers account to account (A2A) payments using open banking to provide instant pay-ins and pay-outs for merchants in Europe.

Cited by these VCs: Dan Chaplin, partner at Dawn Capital

In the Dawn Capital portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Brite is bringing instant payments to Europe's merchants and consumers" Chaplin said.

"Lena, Brite's CEO, is a seasoned executive in this market and has been quietly building the leading player in Europe now operating a scaled and profitable platform."

Total raised: $60 million

What it does: Paris-based Payflows is a treasury management fintech that uses an AI assistant to help busy finance teams better understand their data.

In the Dawn Capital portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "A execution-driven team who are building deep platform to support finance teams all the way from treasury to procurement," Chapin said.

"They're building an evangelical community of customers in their home market where they've quickly become an integral vendor."

Total raised: $5.5 million

What it does: London-based Yonder is a credit card business offering points and perks for dining out among other rewards.

Cited by these VCs: Remus Brett, partner at LocalGlobe

In the LocalGlobe portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2023: " Whilst most sectors of consumer fintech have been disrupted, often multiple times, credit cards remain a high margin stronghold for the incumbents," Brett said.

"Yonder is changing this with premium, experience-based credit cards for urban millennials. A beautiful product, with ever-evolving and easy-to-redeem rewards, is driving best-in-class customer engagement and love." 

Total raised: $112 million

What it does: London-based Atoa wants to offer cheaper payment processing costs for merchants than Visa and Mastercard. The company connects bank accounts through its app to reduce costs for merchants.

In the LocalGlobe portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Atoa is another UK breakout company disrupting traditional card payment rails using open banking," Brett said. "Focusing on offline SMEs who feel the brunt of credit card fees, businesses can easily accept consumer payments via QR codes. This means real time settlement and an alternative to costly terminals. "

Total raised: $8.7 million

What it does: Berlin's Payrails is a FinOps startup that lets businesses reconcile payments and refunds through a simplified platform.

Cited by these VCs: Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst and Kaushik Subramanian, partner at EQT Ventures

In the General Catalyst and EQT Ventures portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "With the value of digital payments set to continue soaring throughout 2024 and beyond there's a golden opportunity for Payrails," Yavuz said. "I believe that Payrails will not only ride this wave of change but will play a crucial role in shaping the future of international commerce and financial services."

Total raised: $20.8 million

What it does: Atlar is a Stockholm-based fintech founded by former Tink employees that facilitates bank-to-bank payments for companies. While open banking and A2A payments are becoming commonplace, Atlar is focused on a B2B solution.

Cited by these VCs: Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst

In the General Catalyst portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "With rising interest rates and changing market environment, it is becoming more important for CFOs to manage their cash efficiently in a scalable way," Yavuz said. "Atlar's new generation treasury platform paves the way for CFOs to modernize their financial stack by providing single view cash visibility and to eliminate manual workflows by automating and reconciling bank payments"

Total raised: $5.4 million

What it does: London-based Wagestream works with employers to let employees draw down a percentage of their income in the month for a flat fee to help cover costs.

Cited by these VCs: Greta Anderson, Principal at Balderton Capital 

In the Balderton Capital portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: " As workers today are reporting unprecedented levels of mental stress specifically attributed to financial stress, fintechs like Wagestream are stepping in to provide better financial products where traditional providers fall short,"

Total raised: $256.7 million

What it does: London-based Opna is a climate fintech startup that connects corporates with carbon projects looking for funding.

Cited by these VCs: Terese Hougaard, partner at Atomico

In the Atomico portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: " As the global climate crisis worsens, there is still an existential gap between the supply and demand of high quality carbon credits, spurring a need for a different way to offset emissions," Hougaard told Business Insider.

"We think Opna is a company to watch because their mission is to enable corporates to credibly meet their net zero goals by mobilising capital into high-quality climate projects, with speed, scale, and with equity by offering a climate fintech platform for corporates to meet and connect directly with trusted & vetted project developers."

Total raised: $6.5 million

Female Invest

What it does: Female Invest is a Danish startup that offers subscription-based educational content about investing for women.

In the Atomico portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "There is a pressing need for gender equality in the financial industry, with only 10% of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 list, and with women earning on average 37% less than men in similar roles on a global scale," Hougaard said.

"We think Female Invest is an exciting company to watch in this space, since they are directly tackling this problem with their financial learning and community platform which aims to help close the financial gender gap."

Total raised: $6.1 million

What it does: Ben is a London-based employee benefits SaaS startup that bundles perks like lunch allowances and gym memberships.

Cited by these VCs: Greta Anderson, principal at Balderton Capital.

In the Balderton Capital portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: " Ben has raised the bar on what employees can expect in terms of benefits choice, while at the same time reducing admin and creating more cost transparency and control on the company side," Anderson said.

Total raised: $18.5 million

What it does : Kaiko a cryptocurrency market data provider for institutional investors and enterprises.

Cited by these VCs : Hadrien Comte, principal at Revaia

In the Revaia portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "The strength of the crypto market is poised to continue in 2024 after the US SEC approved bitcoin ETFs democratizing access to the asset class," Comte said. "It's probable Ethereum ETFs will follow and the bitcoin halving happening somewhere in April 2024 will be another positive catalyst for the crypto market this year. Kaiko will benefit from these tailwinds."

Total raised: $91.2 million

What it does: Griffin is a fintech that provides banking-as-a-service products from London. Led by a former AirBnb software engineer, Griffin is regulated in the UK.

Cited by these VCs: Nirwan Tajik, growth equity investor at Revaia

In the Revaia portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Payments and wealth firms remain critically dependent on other regulated partners for access to clearing and the banking system," Tajik said. "By providing robust account and payment infrastructure alongside the full bank license, Griffin is uniquely positioned to dramatically unlock value for these two massive sectors."

Total raised: $42.3 million

What it does: Grünfin is a sustainable investment platform, emphasizing impact portfolios that address climate change, health, and gender equality.

Cited by these VCs: Christian zu Jeddeloh, investment associate at Norrsken VC.

In the Norrsken VC portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "As the global impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, there is a growing visibility and demand towards value-based sustainability investing, both from individuals and companies alike," zu Jeddeloh said.

Total raised: $4.3 million

What it does: London-based Dovetail was founded by Palantir's climate data team members and wants to use AI to manage environmental and financial risks in climate investments.

In the Norrsken VC portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Dovetail aims to drive more capital towards climate-transition-relevant sectors by combining climate economics and financial intelligence," zu Jeddeloh.

"Using its valuation and scenario analysis tooling, investors can factor in climate change criteria directly into the investment process, skipping the need for qualitative and cumbersome ESG ratings."

What it does: Paris-based Flowdesk provides market making as a service for token issuers and provides liquidity services for secondary trading.

Cited by these VCs: Tara Reeves, partner at Eurazeo

In the Eurazeo portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Crypto has grown up, and Flowdesk is part of the crucial infrastructure to provide the same liquidity, marketmaking, and OTC trading that power the trade of other securities, in a fully compliant way," Reeves said.

Total raised: $80 million

What it does: Barcelona-based Payflow is a YC-backed earned wage access startup that allows employees to draw down earnings for free.

In the Eurazeo portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "The Y Combinator company is based in Spain, but has a growing operation in LatAm where they've rebuilt financial services pipes to move money cheaply and securely while integrating with fragmented payroll and payments providers," Reeves said.

Total raised: $35.9 million

What it does: Bunch is a Berlin-based startup that offers an operating system for private market assets.

In the Target Global portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Bunch stands out for simplifying the complex process of creating investment syndicates," Valler said. "By democratizing tools that were previously reserved for very large private investors, Bunch is opening up new possibilities for a broader audience in the private markets."

Total raised: $7.9 million

What it does: Barcelona-based Flanks offers an API to automate financial data across the wealth management industry globally.

Cited by these VCs: Nina Mayer, principal at Earlybird

In the EarlyBird portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "We believe that Flanks is perfectly positioned to tackle the opportunity for Open Wealth in Europe and beyond – a trend that is boosted by evolving European regulations (PSD3, FIDA regulation, MiFID III)," Mayer said.

Total raised: $10.7 million

Claimsforce

What it does: Based in Hamburg, Claimsforce has built a highly efficient claims management system leveraging AI technology.

In the Earlybird portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "By focusing on claims with higher complexity and leveraging vast amounts of data, the engine has proven to save customers time and costs, while improving the user experience," Mayer said.

"After showing strong momentum in Europe, the company has now scaled across the pond and has big potential in our view."

Total raised: $7.6 million

What it does: Estonian Montonio is a fintech startup that facilitates e-commerce payments, helping to integrate services like BNPL, alongside deliveries and refunds.

Cited by these VCs: Julia Andre, partner at Index Ventures

In the Index portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Montonio addresses a crucial but underserved piece of the e-commerce infrastructure – handling everything that happens from payment onwards through a single, self-serve API integration." 

"Without Montonio, sellers are routinely overcharged and forced to deal with a patchwork of multiple systems or rely on solutions not tailored to their specific market from traditional payments and logistics providers. This is a cost and risk that merchants can no longer afford to take." 

Total raised: $15.7 million

What it does: Dublin's Kota enables small and medium-sized enterprises to connect a range of benefits like health and life insurance policies and pensions in a single platform using an API.

Cited by these VCs: Hannah Seal, partner at Index Ventures

In the Index Ventures portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "The company is disrupting an admin-heavy model dominated by old-school brokerages," Seal said.

"It is an innovative solution for startups scaling quickly across multiple countries who want to quickly and effortlessly attract world-class talent with premium benefits."

Total raised: $8.3 million

What it does: London's Lopay is an instant payments startup that offers card and app payments for businesses at lower fees than traditional providers.

Cited by these VCs: Juliette Souliman, principal at Portage

In the Portage portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Across the financial services industry, fees for undifferentiated services are rapidly being competed to zero, which makes payment a tough game to win," Souliman said. "Despite this, Loay is cracking the equation, with lower POS pricing as a go-to-market and business in a box as a value proposition."

TreasurySpring

What it does: London-based TreasurySpring is a treasury management business that helps companies put their financial reserves to work.

In the Portage portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "The platform delivers new digital pipelines to connect cash rich firms to institutional borrowers," Souliman said. "The onboarding process is very simple; the product is available in a few clicks, and they sell directly to the treasurer of all sizes. Treasury Spring is shaking up the status quo of treasury. It's definitely one to watch."

Total raised: $43.5 million

What it does: London-based Tunic Pay is a startup focused on addressing authorized push payment (APP) scams with a recipient and payments verification platform.

Cited by these VCs: Kaushik Subramanian, partner at EQT Ventures

In the EQT Ventures portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Tunic is building the trust infrastructure to protect real-time payments for banks and their customers," Subramanian said. "They are seeking to address the growing scale of authorized fraud & scams by partnering with banks on making payments conditional to new datasets & workflows. Led by experienced founders, Nicky and Nico, it is definitely one to watch."

Total raised: N/A

What it does: London-based Volt has built a real-time payment network that enables companies to offer account-to-account transactions, reducing fraud risk and the time it takes to send money in the process.

Cited by these VCs: James Black, partner at IVP

In the IVP portfolio?: Yes

Why it's hot in 2024: "Volt is a next-generation payment platform disrupting how we transact," Black told BI. "Led by CEO Tom Greenwood, the team at Volt is creating a global payment infrastructure that enables money movement in seconds instead of days,"

Total raised: $87.8 million

What it does: Paris-based Pivot offers automation tech for procurement targeted at scaling businesses.

In the IVP portfolio?: No

Why it's hot in 2024: "Pivot is modernizing and automating procurement for businesses through its Procure-to-pay solution," Black said. "The company is gaining strong traction for how it seamlessly integrates into enterprise systems and for its usability."

Total raised: $27 million

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