I didn't say, buy me a race horse. Oh no, it's one more thing. I'm strong and getty.
We're going to talk to a little artificial intelligence. And I am god as much as I read about it and I'm fascinated by it. You'd think I would be a guy who is like paying for the premium chat GPT and using it and trying it out, But I'm not so. My first dipping the toe into AI has been what has showed up on my iPhone in the last couple of weeks with their new AI. The summaries of the emails and texts.
I love.
It's really quite amazing. So I get a long text from somebody and then just right there in the line, is you know, just a few word summary of it?
Huge fan of it?
Oh, it's I love it. It's amazing. And then last night I was I don't know if this always happens or I just noticed it. So I got a really long text from somebody about a complicated situation they're dealing with, and I don't know how I feel about this, AI suggested my reply. Oh, and I thought I'll come up with my own replies.
If that's okay, How must you pull yourself up by your boat straps.
Yeah, it was something like that.
I had one the other day where I sent somewhat of a long message and a little thing popped up that said, would you like to correct your grammar?
Like, no, don't tell me. I don't minding a book. I don't mind hints on that. But this was like a what take I should have on someone's problem? As I replied to them, and I thought, that's that's not your stay in your lane. AI.
Wow, that's bold.
Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought. I'll be damned well.
I mean if if you described to me, Hey, if it was crazy. A friend of mine called me last night and said this, and I jumped in with, well, you should tell him that he needs to you'd be like, dude, dude, I'm just telling you about it. I didn't ask you to like take it over.
Right, And but so that on the other end of it, what you've gotta be ready for is you could send some long heartfelt text to somebody about a breakup or something problem you're having with a job, and the reply you get might be your lazy buddy just hit the suggestion. I think you gotta look for a new job, probably not gonna work out there or whatever.
AI says, other fish in the sea, and then.
They come back to you. Hey, Mike, thanks so much for that advice.
You're a real pal. You're always in a year I can lean on. I appreciate that.
Yeah, I'm starting to play with it a little bit and enjoying it. I'll tell you this, friends, and this is big fun if you go into image playground now on. In messages, Jack doesn't use emojis because he lacks.
The capacity for joy, but yet to send my first emoji.
So, but you can now create AI images of yourself in various moods and situations and that sort of thing. And they are as my buddy Brian says, they're they're quite realistic, they make you thirty percent better looking than you are, cool, they're very amusing, and they will guaranteed creep out your spouse or partner. Yes, it's there seems to be one hundred percent correlation between sending it to your loved one and then being creeped out by it,
which is hard to describe why exactly. Maybe it's that what's the It's not Okham's rais or the Infinite Valley or the Uncanny Valley.
Uncanny Valley.
Yeah, something that is almost right is disturbing to us as humans for some reason.
This isn't almost almost right.
But the next step up in the playground is you can make use that same technology and turn yourself into an emoji that you can attach to texts. I just sent you the one that it created of me. I sent I put in a picture of myself and said talking into a microphone. Yeah, so now I can throw that little chick into texts. Oh, but it's it's problematic. How much fun this this new AI is on these phones?
Oh yeah, here, stand by Jack. This is a very odd, very odd here's uh, here's roughly what I sent yesterday.
Okay that and it's amazing how fast it does it too, when you put the photo or whatever information in you need.
It's it's a matter of seconds.
Yeah, all right, go sending it to the group. Dig this this is the and birthdepw Wow, how do you do this? Guys? Where do you find this sent image playground?
It does make you thir weirder, looking better because it's weird.
Better looking, But it's it's all putting to Judy.
I'll tell you that I'm not hitting on you, but you're better looking than that.
I don't know.
That's a weirder teeth than that, for sure.
Teeth. That guy could use some white ners.
Yeah, mix it a little fluoride. Oh my god, Yeah, I've got I got like summer teeth. Like it's like, is this did I accidentally say and make me British?
Yeah?
There should be a piece of hay tucked in between those two front ones right there.
Or make me homeless room and they still got a few bugs to work out. I was messing with it a little bit the other day when it first landed on my phone, and I just did a I just voice texted a I want to bear in a cowboy hat, and it had and he gave me a baron a cowboy hat and then dancing, and then it was a baron a cowboy hat dancing, and just I tell it.
I want my wife and a cowboy hat.
I've seen plenty of that stuff. Yeah, you can do that all day long, do it, but it's just it's amazing. And if I would have loved that so much as a kid, oh my god, it would have blown my mind.
So for everybody wondering and Michael, I know you just asked.
If you go to your settings on your iPhone and scroll down, it says Apple Intelligence and Siri, and you have to turn that on.
It.
I'll go through a download and upgrade process. But then all of a sudden, playground and whatnot will appe.
And it's the little plus sign next to the field where you write a text where you can add photographs or whatever picture you have to.
Have the newest iPhone or fifteen and up. Okay, good, I do got fifteen now, so all right?
Yeah, so anyway, isn't it oddly off putting?
I'm trying to fill out figure out how you prompt it to give you the AI suggestion. It looks like it has to be a recent text you got, but I but I got one today, like somebody texted me something and AI says I should reply with I get that.
I don't.
I don't need your help on that.
All right, let me see if it will it work in a group text.
I don't know. I just noticed it last night, and the one it gave me last night was on this really complicated friend of mine's life situation, and it said it gave me some suggestions and I thought, this is
really not appropriate. Everybody's typing in their phone. I know, I got a dance a cowboy hat, and I like, how if you say a lot like my wife, if you want a dancing bear in a cowboy hat, it'll give you like five versions, fat bear, thin bear, cowboy hat and vest in boots or cowboy hat and just you know, a six gun or whatever.
I for some reason asked it to make a pickle working out. So I have a pickle that's lifting a bar bell.
There you go, that's a fun one.
Makes sense.
Yeah, okay, let me send you this Jack and see what it summarizes and whether it suggests a boy a reply? What Jack read? That's real quick?
Yeah, so it's not suggesting a reply. And I don't know why. I don't know why it sometimes doesn't sometimes doesn't.
Did it have a summary or was it too short to need it?
I think it's too sure.
I wrote you were an idiot and held me back my entire career. I quit, lose my number.
Lose my number. That pretty funny.
So the whole I didn't tell you to buy me a racehorse introduction was about going into Jeff Fowler's column in the Washington Post recently great tech writer, but he was trying to assess the capability of AI at this point, using a couple of different systems, and he had He gave it a couple of missions. One was fairly successful. He tested Operator, which is what company is that from?
I can't remember, it doesn't matter, Google it. But he tasked Operator with interacting with my internet service provider, go into my Comcast Xfinity account and see if you can find me a less expensive plan. Operator applied, all right, but thirty seconds later it stopped. It needed my log
into the Exfinity website. The problem is Operator didn't know much about the nitty gritty details of your life, but it needs your data to actually be helpful, so it often pauses and asks for help, and it tries to shield your privacy, which also means that often it stops and says, hey, can I use this or can you give me this whatever? But then this is where I got more interesting. Once Operator was logged onto my Comcast account,
it took about two minutes to do something incredible. It found a way to save me money, well sort of, it said, it found an alternate internet plan for thirteen dollars per month. That seemed awfully low because I currently pay sixty eight.
I was going to say, I think Lend's like eighty.
Yeah, So I inspected it's browser window and saw a Comcast was really saying this plan would be minus thirteen dollars compared to my current plan, not thirteen dollars. Okay, it missed the minus sign. Another big question is whether AI can. About AI is whether it can understand enough about the real world or even just the web to operate in it. Repeatedly in my tests, I saw that operator could misinterpret what it saw in its browser. Now
this part it is interesting. In this case, Operator redeemed itself after I asked it to spell out the full prices, including taxes and fees. It gave the right total and did one better. It read all the fine print and found that this deal would go up by sixteen dollars after an introductory period, making it a bad deal.
That is helpful.
I didn't even think about having AI read the you know, the terms and.
Condition summarize the ten pages where it's going to watch every keystroke or whatever it says.
Right, and at this point it might miss the salient points, the really important stuff. But the fact that it's moving in that direction. Hey, read this legal lease and tell me the parts I need to know would be super helpful, obviously, But then the failure that was a success, he said. The failure was he said, find the cheapest set of a dozen eggs I can have delivered. Then I gave it my address to conduct its search. It needed my
logins for grocery delivery services. Blah blah blah. I didn't think about it at the moment, but doing so also gave Operator access to the credit cards I'd saved with those services.
About to say, I'm not willing to give aim at credit card and see, I wonder how it does with this.
Initially, Operator found some five ninety nine a dozen eggs on a site called Mercado, but noticed there was a twenty dollars minimum order requirement. Good job told I told it that it could add additional eggs to check the final price, but it decided to switch it's onto Instacart. Then Operator went quiet as it clicked around, and I walked away from my computer. A few minutes later, I got an alert from the credit card app on my phone. I had just made a purchase on Instacart. What happened?
How do I stop it? I gasped, Was there any chance the AI might go on a bigger shopping spree? I hadn't told it to buy eggs, just find cheap ones. I was able to reconstruct some of what had happened. On the instacart website. Operator found a dozen large white eggs for thirteen dollars and nineteen cents, more than double
the other site. For unclear reasons, it purchased these, added a three dollar tip and a three dollars priority fee on top of a seven dollars and ninety nine seven ninety nine delivery fee, four dollars service pee fee, and twenty five cent bag fee. Thankfully, at least operator climbed and offered to sign up for an Instacart membership blah blah blah, And they got the wrong number on that actually, and it cost him thirty three dollars I think it
was for his eggs. Thirty one dollars on a dozen eggs.
That's pretty interesting that it didn't do that and then say would you like to purchase it just went ahead and purchased them.
And then you have to call the credit card company and say sorry, that was AI that did that.
It wasn't me forgery.
You make some omelets?
Yeah, I called the credit card company, said I can't eat this many eggs? What should I do?
Oh my gosh, So who did Jack? Did you do that? You?
I did Jack?
Oh? Oh my gosh. Have you looked at that yet? No, don't worry. It doesn't totally make you look like a rube.
Oh my god, Oh my god, that is that's not thirty I hope that's not thirty percent better looking. I'll just I'll just make that my my dating profile if I ever go online.
Here you go, Oh my god, that's brutal. Oh my god, my kids are going to you said, so you got to plunk out this theme from Deliverance on your jet.
Yeah, that's supposed to be a picture of me. It didn't quite come out right at all.
A second, how come you get to look like that?
You know?
All I put was dark hair, five foot seven, and it said, you know, gifts it and I put leather pants.
Why does AI make you look like that? But makes me look like this?
Michael gave a description of himself. I actually put a picture of you in there, and it pulled from a photo.
No, Michael looks like you know, Timothy Shallomet at his best, I mean, hot, angrogynous model type. I look like somebody you would run from or donate to. Right, I was old it, this is crazy angry look. I gotta send that to a few people and see how they react.
You know what, It's funny. I gave it a clearly angry, disapproving look, and it at most it made me look oddly manic, But the rest are pleasantly contemplative. It's like Apple won't let me be angry, just it.
Doesn't want you to be likes happy Joe.
I'm gonna I'm gonna spend more time paying attention to Oh my god, I'm going to spend more time paying attention to the suggested replies to text me now that I'm getting them, because I went to one last night my son. I texted him something and he said, it's really late. I'm getting ready to go to bed. And then AI suggested I say okay, good night, which is you know, reasonable, I guess just to avoid having to type it out or say it.
You know, I tell you what though, you use any keyboard shortcuts?
No, I'm familiar with the term, but I don't use them.
Yeah, I do, for partly for when I'm forwarding articles to myself at mailbag at Armstrong and geddy dot com. It's so cumbersome to type out and if it doesn't autofill, I just do the first five letters and it autofills for me, no matter what, whether the site's working properly or not. And actually there's a funny story connected to this.
My son discovered this years ago. You could do that, and for whatever angsty teenage reason at the time or very early twenties, he thought it was just so dumb and cliched when people would text lol, And so he and we shared an Apple account in a way that doesn't exist anymore. But so I would type lol. I remember talking about this on the air, and it would instead of that, it would auto fill a phrase that was, why don't you blank my face because I'm a blanking blank.
Okay, I remember this feature?
Yes, yes, that's hilarious. Oh it was, And I typed that and I'm like, what the f Wait a minute, honey, honey. I went to gudy and look what my phone just did. What the hell is this? Oh that's brilliant, And it was an unrepeatable phrase.
I have to turn that off on my phone, I think for a couple of reasons. Because I tried to say I was d D the other night to a friend because I was designated driver, and for some reason, my phone thinks d D means sorry, I'm driving, I'll text you later, and it wouldn't let me just say d D. So yeah, it's a little a little frustrating.
I don't know, but anyway, I'm sorry. To get back to Jack's point. Judy, who is my wife, who's a very busy person and does various things around town, musical things and craft things and whatever. She always texts me when she's on her way home, and you know, it's usually it's always on my way exclamation point, and you know, I reply with a hard or whatever, a great scene,
a few or whatever. But she revealed that she has programmed her phone so all she has to do is do like O and space M and it finishes the message for her. So she's not actually typing out on my way exclamation point, her phone is doing it for her. And I find myself resenting that just a little bit.
That's interesting. That's what I was wondering about. These replies. I don't have any problem with saying to my son good night, obviously, but the computer suggesting it and me just agreeing to it.
Having the computer wish your son good night on your behalf certain.
Yeah, it seems a little weird.
Does seem a little Victorian. The nanny interacts with the child ninety eight percent of the time, and on Sundays I will go for a walk with the boy and then send it back to boarding. It just seems a little why is there a little man.
Here to right?
Right?
And the example I had of somebody sending me a long heartfelt text about something I never remembered it was last night, and then the AI suggesting a reply, I thought that would be really cheapening the seriousness of this conversation. Not that they would know, but it's.
I don't know if it's something that you're already going to say and the phone assists you, like how Judy does the on M and it says on my way, I mean she was already going to type that you Jack were already going to say good night.
It's not like But the other example I have it was something like, I think you're on the right track. I hope that works out for you after a really long heartfelt text about some difficult situation. And that's just that ain't right.
That that ain't right. So final note that last picture I sent you. I wish I could send the original picture, but I can't figure out that was me like angrily grimacing at the phone, and Apple turned it into a you know, cheer alert picture.
I think it's very Stepford wives. First of all, this aged you for some reason. I don't know why I did that.
This photo. Hell no, you're not.
But the second part of it is in that prompt you can tell it the mood you want the photo to be in. So m so you can grimace and then tell Apple, hey, make me look like I'm like I'm pissed, and it should do it for you.
And then you can add cowboy and whatever else a series of prompts for it to.
But one thing Apple needs to figure out what these made up emojis of you is. They don't flossing is exists. Flossing exists, toothpaste exists. Let's teeth, Yeah, the teeth are bad. What is going on there?
It's sounds like like I got newscaster teeth or anything.
But they're okay, but they're not brown with those big gaps in between. I mean, what the heck is going on there?
All right, one more one more effort? Make Apple make me look angry? Right, there's my grimacing. I'm even got like one eye closed like I'm Popeye and then angry. Will Tim Cook permit me to feel natural human emotions are not? Oh hey, that's pretty good. Wow, that's like call security. Okay, Tim, I retract the criticism. I just wasn't good at it.
That's a good one, Katie.
Yeah, that actually looks like you. Katie. What was the prompt that got a cartoon drawing of you that actually looks like you? I just a picture of it, used a photo of you?
Okay, Well you have the advantage of being super cute.
Yeah that makes it easier.
Yeah, you guys, it's two weeks, Joe.
This last one of you is great. Yeah, that's that's you know you live with me. You're gonna see that face. I'm gonna use it. What I'll tweet that right now our ex account so you can see it.
I'm gonna use AI to win arguments with my wife. I'll just look at it and wait for the response, and this is what I'll tell her exactly.
You take over here. Yeah, well, I guess that's it.