Media. You.
Wow, you run a tech podcast and we're we're talking about how everything's getting bad. Yet you rely on the technology today, that the cloud based technology. You don't like backups, you don't like recording on your own personal device. It's like you don't like owning anything. It's like you don't like owning anything.
Well, this is great. So I was trying to read the intro to my show Better Offline, but Juniper has decided that she will be leading us in today. Welcome to Better Offline. That's one of my very rude guests, Juniper from Kill the Computer, who is here with her much less rude co host Caleb. Caleb, thank you for joining us.
Far.
Yes, yeah, it's a competition, and of course we've got a Refasan from Wide Left, the Football podcast plus newsletter. Well, we've come in. I brought out one together today just to complain, and I'm going to complain about the fact that my microphone just fell over perfect, which is annoying. I also want to complain I wasn't given the opportunity to invest in something called Gary's List, which is Gary Tan who currently runs y Combinator, says we're starting a
citizens union for radical centrism. We approved. Local politics is wootable in San Francisco. Now we're building the community to do everywhere news, commentary, and accountability for policies that affect California and our society. And I'm just going to say, go fuck yourself, Gary if you say, if you write the words radical centrism, horrible.
Man.
I just love the status quo.
So I've actually been looking into I've been learning a little bit about this guy recently, and like hy Combinator, I, I primarily be like by proxy of finding out about this place in San Francisco called Epic Church.
Are you familiar with this?
I'm immediately sold. It's it's really epic. It's it's bacon, it's it's yeah, that's all that stuff. But no, basically it's this this tech positive church, like basically an evangelical church for tech minded people. Uh, and like founders in the in the Bay Area. So like people like Trace, uh what's the name Tray Stevens go there, Gary Tan goes there. All these like weird fucking awful type people like Peter Teal. I swear to God, I I am
not shinny you. Peter Teal is like one of the thought leaders of the type of people there, like.
They like, how are we spelling thought actually.
Thought h.
Yeah, but no, it's like the worst kind of person in the tech world getting evangelical. Like they're like, this is actually where.
Peter Chield got the idea to like create cliviculars. I need a new Holy.
He is there, Jesus Christ clvicular is there their Virgin's birth Christ now.
But it's like a whole thing now, right where like people who were like typically associated with movements that might be humanist or atheist or whatever you want to call it, have like because they're old white men have turned into like embracing some version of Christianity, right, Like even Richard Dawkins, like the Atheist Supreme or whatever the hat he wears. He's like, well, I'm a cultural Christian and like all of them have just been moving more.
Cultural Christians just being American.
I yes, I look, he's a piece of shit and anyway he can kind of communicate that. I think you'll take those opportunities. But like the Tech God Church feels perfect to that.
I don't know, I feel like.
We've used the meme U don't create the tournament nexus like way too often. But it just like every time you explained something new about what's happening in the world, like some tech billionaire has read something from a sci fi novel and it has taken like the wrong lesson from it, like again in again time, like oh, yeah, we've started a church to worship technology.
Oh literally, best example of this, sorry, you can go go on, best example of this. Just because he's been on my mind a lot recently and I read a lot about his antichrist like tour that he's been doing. But Peter Tiel, he read the philosopher Rene's Gerrard and he came away with the exact opposite interpretation. I think of what you're supposed to take away from this philosopher, which is that like society and powerful people use scapegoats to uh like political scapegoats to put blame on certain
people to get whatever political end that you want. And that's like a cautionary tale. It's like a cautionary tale against scapegoats. Yeah, Peter Tiel, He's like, wait, but skatecoats are kind of goaded though, like literally like we can use them to our advantage.
Is this a bad time for me to announce that I'm launching my new company that's called The Ring from Lord of their.
Rings, the One Ring. And you're partnering with uh surveillance company. You're partnering with Palantariah.
Yeah. Under under my company, all the surveillance companies will unite.
Here's the thing with this, this Gary's List thing. I've been clicking around. He writes so often, like can he posts like an oracle a day, So this is a blog that he runs. I guess as well as that.
But also it's not like Emily's List for perverts, like what is Gary's List?
It's it appears to be a blog in which he complains, okay, we need we need more complaining, but also a degree of it's like complaining but also saying he cares about centrism.
And then he's like a, I just thought it sim City in four days without reading the fucking just what makes more gun in my mouth?
Is just like he's attempting to wrangle Andrew Yang as like a guest poster.
So I just don't know what possible, Like.
I'm still still on the list. Idea, why is it called list? I'm actually kind of mad about this.
It's a list of his posts, like that appears to be it. I just this guy is a billionaire. Yeah, I assume that means he has tens of millions of dollars liquid. You could do so much with that. You can through pretty much anything. You could have your favorite chef Mike and Mayo. I assume you eat those, and you could have your favorite band playing at the same time wherever you want it to in the world. And
you're like, no, I need to make fucking blog for centrism. Yeah, let's like protect centrism from from something.
It looks like he's the very anti union. He is.
He's complaining about in one of these articles about how thirty thousand kids are pawns in a union war that won't even help the teachers there.
Yeah, no, he is. It's exactly. He's the kind of guy.
But that's the thing is, like every I feel like, not you know, maybe not every but like the majority of the most influential tech uh tech Silicon Valley person these days are turning to evangelical religion. They complain about how there's not enough centrism in the world today while they benish it and like simultaneously they benefit and work with the Trump administration, So like, what do you what are they what are they even complaining about at the end of the day, And.
What do they mean?
Yeah, what do they even really mean? I think they just mean that they don't like. Really, what I think it is is, I think they just don't like that people don't like them as much as people used to people. These people are mad that no one's really following following for the the like AI grift of like, oh, it's going to simultaneously AI is going to replace all of our jobs but simultaneously make the world a better place. Like, no one's really following for that, And I think they're
mad about that. I think these people are genuinely upset.
AI is in its gentleman science era.
What the fuck does that? What do you mean? What do you mean science?
It's a four minute read from Gary Tan who come on who? Okay, So it's beautiful because all of the all of the images in this article are obviously AI generated, as for all of these articles, right, because if you're gonna have an ethos being a cheap piece of shit, you might as well embrace it. But in it it has a jar labeled maple syrup. Yeah, what is and what is in the no idea?
What is in the jar? But it is not maple yrup.
Will include a link to this because it is just it's wonderful because it's just a bucket with maple syrup in it.
I assume rings or gaskets or something.
This is what it looks like. That's what it looks like. It has like some carrots in it. I don't know.
Dr of this article is LMS have reset the reset the research game. The biggest breakthrough is the simple ideas anyone can try, and the easy questions haven't been answered yet, to which I say, what the fuck are you talking about?
What do you mean?
The biggest breakthrough the simple ideas, but the easy questions haven't been answered yet?
Come on, what dot mean?
I don't know. I just this guy's a billionaire. He could do anything, like you can hire a good writer, like, for example.
I can't get over the idea that the gentleman's issue is that science is too hard.
Like, well, I mean that is kind of the issue of science in general.
Well that's a good thing, though, It's like we've gotten past the part of science that is easy, which means we have made advancements, and you have to study science to be good.
I don't this feels what the fuck are we doing?
He wants every dope to be able to advance the field, which like, I guess.
What science in the hands of adult like me, I'm going to start the one ring company.
If you do, you'll you'll accidentally create a black hole with a Hadron collider, like you will be saying, dude.
Jilan Musk is the richest man on the planet and he is so fucking stupid, But I could be worse.
Actually speaking of him, He's another person that's embraced this like soft religion aesthetic. He was in an interview with Katie Miller. Of course you need more demons around to talk to people like you, my Musk, and he's like, yeah, you know, I believe in God. You know, I do believe in a creator. And it's like all of this. I guess the reason I've been focusing so much on that in particular recently with all of these people like Gary Tan, all of these people, is it's all happening
at the same time. They're all sort of doing this weird embrace of evangelical religion all sort of it started before. Yeah, but it's I don't know if it's like a cope thing I've been.
I think some of it might be, And this might be just doing too much like armchair pop psychology, but like, I think some of it is that in order to kind of proselytize for AI, in order to evangelize their own kind of element or this thing, they have to put themselves in a frame of mind that allows them to believe in the kind of powerful myth making that is analogous to religion, especially because some of these Singularity people, which is not necessarily the same as some of these
AI people, but there's a lot of overlap. I do believe that AI will become God, right like a backwards looking you know.
I don't think these people believe in anything, sure, I just like that's kind of like but I guess that it's just a.
Convenient label to right, Yeah, hear.
The word believe just serves as like an analog for telling us the things that they think we should believe, right, Like, I don't really care if they actually believe this shit. I care that they're telling people this ship.
There's a really good profile on Peter Teel. I think it wasn't wired about how he uses like Christian apocalyptic end Time's imagery and a lot of his speeches, and I was really interested in all that, which we talked about on our Showju.
Yeah, that's the piece about Rene Gerard the philosopher that he like sort of go on, sorry.
Yeah, that's it, just he does that and then Gerard and then you know he's very big on Carl Schmidt. I'll let you if you know who that is.
God.
It comes back to a very simple thing for me, which is, these are not things you do if you have anything you enjoy. If I'm sitting alone, it's been a long day I have. I can name five movies and six video games I could. I've been weary watching Personal Interest excellent show makes me so happy. Wat you go over and it's awesome. But I drink a diet coke with that. Wow, I feel awesome. These people like I need to take on a new religion. I need to create a pro centrism blog, and only then will
I possibly be happy. It's just, it's just. I would say it was sad if I cared for these people in any way, shape or for It's just.
I hear, Oh, they're into religion.
No, they're not. They just they They sit around like board motherfuckers, tugging on the winkies, going.
Oh, what's going on in the world.
What Jesus was real God was to gpu. We've got ndre GPUs. He put the GPS together, make the a g A. I don't know what that really means. But anyway, who's in your email in box, Peter Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, by the way, here's here's the thing. I'll say, jmail. I think the people who made jmail should get a Pulitzer for sure. The people that made jmail, which is the searchable Epstein database, really really like they deserve a
Pulitzer here. And also so does the guy who the final email that Jeffrey Epstein received on j ee project at yahoo dot com was just like called cod Cody Rudland and he said lol, good riddance and the subject was.
Fucking buzz.
Buzzerbe Jeffrey Epstein.
Also, jeff got invited to a Michael Clayton screening. Anyway, I don't want to get into Epstein because I know that all.
Three is a whole different thing.
It's just we're in such a weird spot of the moment with all this AI shit as well, because there was that something big is happening piece.
Oh yeah, I wanted to kill myself with that.
Oh I haven't heard about this peace. I also want to be in a state where I'm going to kill myself.
Tell me.
Yeah, well, it's a piece by this guy who's like a scammer, guy called Matt Schumer, who back in twenty twenty four claimed his reflection seventy b.
Wait is this is this when the AI like tried to post something to like get up and it got rigid.
No, no, that's a different thing entirely.
That was just the scam of the week before. Yeah, that was no.
No, that one I'll get to in a second.
Though.
This was the one where it was like a four thousand, seven hundred word blog. That's my fault.
I read it. No, I did read this.
Yeah I didn't.
I remember four thousand, seven hundred because I put it into a word counter yep, because I was like, what the fuck is this?
Yeah?
No, it sucks, but yeah, but we have listeners they should also know what this is.
So I mean I heard about it on the monologue last week. So there and then the most people said don't don't worry about being angry, and one person was like, you need to be less angry. It's just I think we're entering like a hysteriozone. And I actually my favorite thing about that blog by far was watching two or three other people try and do similar blogs and just nothing happened. People be actually, yeah, it's actually, it's actually crazier. It's actually even bigger and crazier.
I think the thing that I thought was even weirder about that piece is there was a lot of people I do genuinely respect that like shared that piece and they were like, oh my god, like everyone needs to read this, like typically you know, very skeptical people that have very good takes.
Yeah, yeah, like all these people.
Yeah, because I said some nuts and nice things about my friend Chris Tredulu, So you're a dollar.
The thing about this article that like really gets me article blog post unvetted piece of AI because it is clearly written by AI, by the way, like which should not be shocking given that it's an AI evangelism piece. Of course it's written by AI, which, by the way, Cleveland dot Com uh released it like an editor's thing
today oh god, yeah, we'll get to where. Second, they turned a journalism candidate had turned down a job with them, because the Cleveland dot com is like the newspaper of Cleveland, right, and a student who is trying to get a job with them turned down the job because they don't have reporters writing articles. They have an AI rewrite specialist who turns their material into drafts, so they just have the
reporters do like sourcing and quote gathering and stuff like that. Yeah, and the editorial explaining this and explaining that journalism schools are failing students by making them think they should write. He's also obviously written by AI. But back to this article by Schumer, so it is obviously written by AI. But it like keeps on coming up with these examples that like are contextually actually very poor examples of the thing that they're trying to But there's like a million
of them, right. It's like a gift gallop of like AI benchmarks that are meant to create this sense that AI is like the like smarter than PhDs are past the bar exam, and it's like, well, when you.
Sorry, also PhDs, listen to this, and I will say this.
Not very smart people. I know, if you you've not met.
Enough PhDs, if you're like PhD level in time, not to say they're every PhD is stupid, but not to say every PhD is smart either.
Well, okay, I will I'll say this.
Ben Carson is a gifted neurosurgeon, right, Like they think about that?
Well was it was?
But like think about that people, right, yeah, and and and PhDs are incredibly talented within but like even with analogous specialists, like we've seen PhDs in like chemistry go come out and write books about how like AIDS isn't real, right, Like chemistry is pretty close to biology, and you still got that fucking wrong, right, But regardless of like that, like stuff like past the bar Exam is like in the thing and it's like contextually it's actually not that
interesting because they passed something called the Universal bar Exam, which no individual state use it.
There's like a million other things.
So the best the best thing in it was him saying that he cited this METATR study. Oh it doesn't even say it, well, no, no, But what's great about it is it's like it's like tasks that an AI can do. The involve it working autonomously for hours, hours and hours right when you go and click on it, it's actually tasks that it succeeds at fifty percent of the time. Yeah, and how the.
Meta article or whatever it was is absolutely mischaracterized, like egregiously mischaracterized, like to the point if we had journalism still and this was run in a newspaper that cared about stuff, which what a bygone era that we pretended to have.
So sad.
Another part of this whole conversation is that the thing that's been pissing me off for a while now, but especially recently with this like increased hysteria around, like oh AI is like the big thing is gonna happen soon is it's like people keep saying that it's smart. It's that it's going to be smarter than humans, maybe even that it is smarter than humans already, when it's like, there is no unless I'm missing something there, It has
not shown any level of original intelligence. What it can do is that it's just more a very efficiently coming through databases of words and like just information. It's very efficient at that, But that doesn't prove intelligence as far as I'm aware. So whatever people say AI is intelligent. I lose my fucking mind because it's not. It's just fast. It's a fast database search that like it's just like pukes back out at you.
Someone who is it? Okay, yeah, Matt Schumer specific and when you posted on Bluesky of the Day that he was the guy who made that awful video game this is the future.
Oh yeah. If you've seen this listeners, it's the video game thing where it's like it's like two minutes and just it is insane, like the US changes.
Oh yes, wait the game the oh yeah.
And like the guy falls off the bridge and the guys like really impressed that the AI put him back on a bridge. But it's a completely new bridge and a completely new f cash between the town.
Lakito could do that in Mario sixty four, thirty years ago.
Dude, like, come onal today. Yes you can vibe code. Here's how to get started. Fucking start and it's like you go and look, it's like sample task merch files, extract information, clean and convert files, fix finicky images, get rid of garbage. Well, I'm fucking reading some and it's I just feel like we're in this hysteria mode where just every day. There's just this bizarre escalation of like, wow,
AI is so powerful and look it's replacing workers. But then you click on the article, it's like, well, fields that involve maybe being affected by AI have seen less entry level hires, and that will be on the front of the Financial Times. Like that's just like, that's what we're doing. Every other era of actual innovation, they'd be like, yeah, you can, like you have a dear cleon perhaps not Tesla. Look a very nice camera in a phone. Look at the photos. Look how good the photos are. Wow, this
phone can can use email. Now that's a huge deal. This is like yeah, if you squint really hard, it's almost something.
I think.
The thing that gets me is if you which I'm sure someone has done this, if you take this humor article and feed it into an AI and said, hey, can you produce a counter article at coach point point, it would be equally as compelling.
Right, Yes, that's an interesting idea. Actually I don't like using AI, but I would love to see that.
I will be honest, I actually did that perfect seeing Oh my god, I did it using his own his actually his own thing. Let's see, let's see if I got this yeah, because I did it, and I pulled up hyper write, which is his dog shit, his dogship. AI starts up and it basically said, yeah, you know, it's mostly just I don't have it in front of me. I'm sorry, I don't. I didn't prepare.
Journalism, and I know I know I've already had to think. We have a real journalist Jim here too.
Guise me. Actually this is just me straight up complaining, which I know is different to usual. I write like ten to fifteen thousand word analyzes of things, and I am so detailed, and I go through years of earnings and shit, and this guy's like, wow, you know, the computer is just fucking so crazy now, and like do you read that? Like AI is learning from itself and like it's amazing, like and look at this, and people are coming themselves reading it. They're they're like, we need
this guy on national television. And then he's then he says, oh, I'm not trying to scare people. Fuck you, you little worm.
So I do have a question about these AIS, because I don't get these AI startups, and I know you don't fundamentally understand, but I think you know more than me, which is if there's only like eight or nine like models out there, like deep Seak and Kimmi and what what the fuck is in AI start Like they take these models and they would give us a prompt beforehand. So it's federal organized for the tech Okay.
From the very from the very lowest AI startup to the most successful ones like any sphere who makes cursor. It is much more complex at the top end, but it is prompt engineering. It is finding ways to translate what you say to it into a prompt that the model will then use to do something like.
That one of like the eight or nine existing models like Yes, Deep Seek.
And which is what's really funny with this guy's start upbout hyper Rite, which is by a company called other Side AI is they raised two point six million dollars in let's see in November twelve, twenty twenty. Then they raised another let's see other Side another two point eight million in March twenty twenty three. Where the fuck is the money?
Where is it?
Where is it?
Where did it go when you used it?
Did you pay for it?
No?
God?
No?
So yeah, okay, now, yeah, that's a great question.
What the fuck?
No, I truly don't know and it's it's a the current itera. This is from twenty twenty three, the current iteration of hyperwrite, which is a Chrome extension with personalization and context awareness launched in early twenty twenty two. It's a Chrome ex This is the fucking guy, this is the this is I think it just shows that none of these AI boosters actually believe in anything, because I
don't know. When I see someone doing AI criticism and they're just making shit up, I'm like, hey, don't do that. It weakens our argument. These people are like, yeah, just just lying, it's fine.
Just wow. I agree.
I saw Alexis o'hennian talking about it, one of my favorite guys who's just fallen from for them from grace. Like his big previous investment is this thing called Doodles, Doodles n f T that he claims to NFT. No, yeah, he's like a big NFT guy.
Do we think doodles is better or worse than V Friends?
What's V Friends? Oh? Gary Vee's thing? No, No, it's it's the friends. Is Gary Vaynerchuk? What is Gary Vaynerchuk doing If he isn't.
An AI, he's a AI. We I don't even have to look that up. I feel it in my bones. Yeah, he also has Gary Yeah, like doing enough in your life for what.
He sounds like Charlie from It's Always Donny in Philadelphia.
Why do why do these tech people, despite being like a lot of like very health focused to like a degree that is unnerving, they always look sickly. They always look just very wet and sick Brian Johnson. I think did that on purpose, Like I think he wants to look like that, so yeah, and he succeeded. He is really good at looking very sickly and and wet.
So I think what it is is these people, in my experience work insane hours. Now work is a kind of a relative term, but like they're in meetings or dinners or lunches or whatever, or just staring at X the everything app four to seven.
That's a lot, dude, Yeah, that one.
No, I mean, like I can't judge someone for doing that, but like they don't have a time when they're sitting around like taking an edible and watching YouTube of manual cats like palace Cats. Right, they don't have joy in their lives like that, but they are.
Emerge from their process tired and wet because they're tired and damp, just like just like visibly moist, visibly moist or terrifyingly dry.
They all like they have a disease that they have to explain to you. You've never heard of a You just looking at your phone and you're like, damn, dude, that's crazy.
Ye yeah, yeah, man, that's crazy.
Doesn't Jernan Peterson have one of those diseases that's just like sort of low key fake. Like his daughter's like, yeah, he has this thing and then you look into it and it's just like sort of fake or something like that.
June Okay, I was under the impression that she had induced it. So that's that's which is slightly different than fake.
Oh yeah, his cider psychosis.
Yeah, he has some weird shit going on. He has a ton of different things.
I just it's just no one happy would defend a corporation this much. I say this is reading forums of people arguing about video games for years. I even then. The idea of being so desperate to protect the idea that corporations can make more money is so very fucking sad. But it's kind of it's turned into everything now. I mean, I saw on Twitter the other day, people gambling on traffic.
Why why why why why?
I don't understand, Will Menica, what is the target functioned? Like, how do you how does the book verify that you want or lost your band?
It's one of the I don't think this is like a particularly nuanced that, Like it's like it's like people gambling. Let's see how many cars will go through in a particular period.
People need hobbies, man, you've got to call the hotline.
Man.
That's not no.
I'm quoting Will Menica of Chapo here who posted this about a sport where guys just run into each other. And his post was just this is the sport they watching RoboCop and it's like it's like it's just robocops stuff. Now it's just prediction markets. I saw, oh god, we're gonna do a prediction market episode. Got a blog from Barns that, Yeah, it's fucking great. I love prediction markets.
I mean they're getting worse. They're getting so so so bad.
When someone was talking about betting and whether a rocket.
Would ex yeah, the new the rocket that's I don't know when it's launching, but it was yeah that like someone I I screenshot this reply, in particular from Pollymarket. Let me find it really quick. I swear, I just I just did it, and I'm gonna I'm gonna.
Use one too, not even like a SpaceX. Yeah it was disgusting.
Yeah it's Pollymarket. And like, I don't know how long all of that will work, Like how long before that gets outlawed by someone? But I think something that might accelerate that process is someone getting killed because of it.
Yeah, like Garan's awful sun in contact is going to blow up that rocket?
Dude?
Yeah yeah, Like so so what I saw someone said that sorry to be a sculd but wagering on people dying should not be legal, which I think is the most moral and correct in the world. That's fucking crazy. But i'nna that person is fine, very very good take person.
Yeah, great take.
But then Polymarket replied to that, saying, to clarify, this was a market about a potential booster stage rupture to find hardware failure scenario, not about the orion crue capsule or astrona safety. This was not a market on crew injury or loss of life. But like, I don't know, man, I feel like if you are gambling on any stage of this sort of exploding a disaster, that's sort of
gambling on disaster. We saw that there was gambling and prediction markets about Palisades fire, how long it was going to last, how far it was going to reach. So like the idea that people gamble on disasters is not like, oh wow, this took us by surprise that a lot of people thought this would happen. They've it's been happening for over a year now. People have been gambling on disaster for over a year now.
Well, Nick Devoor is the blog from Barrus who's going to join us and as in not today, don't worry, it's just gonna punch, just just fucking like a like a halftime substitution right now. He made the point it's like inevitable that someone uses this to manipulate someone's murder, Like they create a market where someone says, Okay, yeah, you're going to like this, but will this person live or die on May thirteenth? And on some level it's like this will encourage someone to get killed. Like, I
know this sounds extreme, but polymark. Nick also made this point where it's like polymarket already encourages inside of trading.
Yeah, I mean we saw this with with like in addition to the Maduro stuff, right, but we saw this with like Pam Bondy's press conference times where she got within like thirty seconds of that, which is like you could say the markets hit that really well, but I'm not gonna say that. I think she knew someone was gonna make money on the under right, Well, what was the what was the It was how long a particular
press conference on a particular would go. And it's like, you know, a couple hours and then some and and she abruptly, like in the middle of like a sentence, she just shut it down thirty seconds, within uh, within thirty seconds of like the timeline to hit the mark.
And so a bunch of people who had we shouldn't say bet on the ound because it's not betting, right, who had who had purchased contract shares on the events result of it being less than a certain amount of time, made a ton of money out of it.
Yeah. So, like people are.
Already either actively manipulating it or not doing anything to prevent the appearance of manipulating it.
Like when.
Jannis Tatakupo for the Milwaukee Bucks. Who's now like on the chair or something for Call.
She yeah, he's a chair board member of CALCI.
Now yeah, so like he had like demanded a trade. It sounded like from the Bucks to an organization that will actually win games, which is understandable. And there was this whole trade market in Call. She had a bunch of different markets for for Yannis and where he was going to go and whether or not he was going to stay, and ultimately he didn't get traded. He stayed with the Bucks, and everybody who would bet that he was going to stay with the Bucks had made a
ton of money. And then right after that he announced he was on the board of Calls. And it's like, I don't know that Yannis or any of his entourage or whoever put any money on on any of these things, but that sure looks fucking awful, right.
They probably did. I would be I would bet that, I would imagine I would bet I would take that bet on calshe that they did.
I just I every I think that there is goodness in our future and that good things will happen, but I think on the way that there are going to be there's going to be something called the Calshie murders. Maybe yeah, yeah, no, for sure, there's good like we already we've already thankfully I've got to use my term son of Sam Oltman for an AI psychosis murder.
I mean very sad, I mean like no, terrible, but also like nice nice.
But it's just it feels like we're in this weird golf where everyone is desperately trying all the money is trying to pretend that all of this is so fucking sick. When you look at it, even as a booster, it's like great, coding is fast, I guess yay, it's also so expensive and no one wants the no one wants to do the math. Yeah.
That's like the other thing about this is like all of the booster arguments for AI coming for different industries
and jobs or being able to perform different tasks or whatever. Right, all of the arguments about its increasing capability rely on an assumption that the progress quote unquote progress is measured by their own benchmarks anyway that it's made so far will continue at an exponential rate in the same way that we envision technology tends to, which is not really like if you look at the progress of like battery technology, It does not follow the same fucking It's just not
like that. But the way that people seem to imagine technology is just like in crazy, you know, exponential it spikes up until they they.
Put that a some.
Right, Yeah exactly.
It's just when you look at the chot Disco sales will go off.
Yeah, it'll just double every year.
Yeah, but people will assume this, and they'll make the argument that it will without understanding like what it took to get to the shitty place it is now and how we're at the edge of that, like we can't actually devote the more resources to make these models better.
So what's funny is there was because Matt Hughes, who's my editor, who's long suffering, by which I mean I no, I made him watch a two and a half hour long Dario ama Day interview. Sorry sorry, but he found one fascinating quote in here. This is Warrio ama Day, CEO of Anthropic. Even though a part of my brain wonders if it's going to keep growing ten x, I can't buy one trillion dollars a year of computing in
twenty twenty seven. If I'm off by a year in that rate of growth, or if the growth rate is five x a year instead of tens a year, then you go bankrupt. And previously he said, if my revenue is not one trillion dollars, if it's even eight hundred billion, there's no force on earth, there's no hedge on earth that could stop me from going bankrupt if I buy that much compute Why did clear? Well, No, this this interview,
by the way, is fucking sick. It's so funny. It was the he used this example where he says he has he describes having better than fifty percent gross margins. But that's because the way he evaluates gross margins is based on how much a model cost to train and how much the model made money, like how much money.
He separates out the training cost in the inference cost and buckets out future training cost against a different margin, and so like, I, you know, if you did sign it like four point five or whatever, the amount of revenue SIGN at four point five brings in is greater than the inference plus training cost of SIGN at four point five. And he's ignoring the training cost of like four point six, which is like ten times larger, and it always needs to be.
He's ignoring the reinforcement learning and the updates they have to do, which is also a training cost. But actually, I take it back. Here's how Dario Amity talks about profitability. Let me quote him here. Profitability is this kind of weird thing in this field. I don't think in this field profitability is actually a measure of spending down versus
investing in the business. I actually think profitability happens when you underestimated the amount of demand you were going to get, and loss happens when you've overrested, madd the amount of demand you were going to get because you're buying the data centers ahead of time. No, Dario, profitability is when you make more money than you spent you underestimated.
That's such like a.
Fake smart guy way to say that they can demand you were going to get, Like, yeah, I guess the price would go up in a world where your supply doesn't meet demand.
They said that they locked capitalism too, and they unlocked a new version of profitability.
That's awesome.
Yeah, he said that these are stylized facts. What that's that is his term. I'm just if I'm an investor and I read my investment saying stylized facts. I'm stylizing a nine millimeter in my mouth. It's just like I I am. I think things are going to get crazier, not in the actual outcomes, but the things they're going to start promising, Like I can't. I hope Aanthropic tries to go public just so I can see what insane definition of gross margin they have, because I don't think
it's like revenue minus cogs. I think it's a model plus n plus divided by seventy divided by seven thousand plus two million plus one. And they're like, yep, look, numbers higher than last year. What do you think? And the investors who just are I assume catatonic, like they're pitched in this sleep. I just it's all gonna I don't see how this doesn't come down. I'm just like, look at every time I look at the numbers, I
feel crazy. But when I read their definitions for it, they just go, yeah, just you know, work out.
I so, so, I don't know if you guys have been noticing this particularly since Also, I know you guys like this football the Super Bowl ever since the Super Bowl, Nay, yeah, brand new to you. But there was a ton of AI generated ads in the Super Bowl. Since then, I've seen three different companies, one of them being Liquid Death, another being Noodles and Company, and another one I'm blinking on which what what the other? What the other one I saw was? But I saw this is after the
Super Bowl, different companies using AI generated fucking ads. And they're horrible. They're horrifying, They're awful. They're so bad they don't make me want to even look at the brands anymore.
And it's like, I my theory.
I haven't confirmed this, I haven't looked into it, but I'm assuming a lot of these AI generative AI models, these these these companies, whoever runs it, are striking deals with these companies to do like, hey, like make this next ad campaign entirely on us, entirely on us, because in these ads they do mention that they're AI generated. I think the Noodles and Company once says it like in the corner it's like AI. There's like a little pun.
It's been a menu since I've seen that, but there's like a little pun to be like, oh it's AI. So I think these are like very obviously ad campaigns to try to be like hey, wow, AI is everywhere, isn't it. It's crazy how everywhere AI is and everyone loves AI.
It's an attempt to just get attention because like it's basically like, look how much this sucks but it cost us?
Well that's what That's explicitly what Liquid Death did in their ad right. They were like very like they thought they could kind of get away with being like tongue in cheek about using AI and and it like kind of fits their brand image to be kind of irreverent or whatever, and so then they made it terrifying, horrifying.
Uncorble ad.
The worst about was it their energy drink.
It's just one of their drunks.
Have you seen the Darren Aronovski AI generated thing this six? So if you haven't heard about this, dear listeners, unbelievably big fucking hack. Darren Aronovski is making a He's making a thing called On this Day seventeen seventy six, A real is telling the story of America's first meme. I didn't learn any American history. I'm not going to start today. They handed out some shit to some people. I guess just like there's some history unless thingers.
Like fuck undersinding of seventeen seventy six. Is that it's a giant Boyce piece really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, So this movie it's it's called On This Day seventeen seventy six, America's first meme is born when Thomas Payne arrives from England. He's encouraged by Benjamin Franklin to write what others hesitate to say. The resulting pamphlet sends ripples through from the colonies to the other side of the Atlantic, and what was once unthinkable becomes irrefutable, as in, I don't know that he's a huge fucking hack. There is a bit, there are
some really good bits. Nit Thomas Payne, the collar of his shirt changes between shots. They have to constantly cut shots early because the breaks down after six seconds or whatever. Yeah.
Yeah, it's really expensive to have the long shots.
There's a great bit in it where they hand out common sense and as they hand it out, as they pick it up, it goes from saying America to like, wow, just like language because.
Well, unintentionally kind of apropos, I would say, but yeah.
But apparently they're releasing it on Netflix's YouTube.
Oh god YouTube. Yeah, it's like really like the Family sucks.
What it's like the family Guy Ringo star thing with like we'll put the song on the fridge.
But I haven't seen more of it.
They put out a few bits of it, and then they just stopped releasing it, probably because of all the comments that said this looks like dog shit, kill yourself. Like it's mostly just that.
So like the thing is, like you could if it didn't have this insane cost and and and ethical problem associated with it, you could convince me that, like that one Marvel opening for whatever the fuck it was with the scrolls right where it's unsettling and it changes a little bit every.
Couple of seconds, what is this? There was there was.
It might have been doctor what it was doctor Strange? That wouldn't have been very helpful. I thought it was like there's a Marvel TV show where the opening because it's a's a show. I haven't watched anything after.
What's it?
Like thee Yeah, it's invasion which involves the scrolls right, Yeah, And so the opening for that was it with the early version of like AI video generation And it is uncomfortable, I remember, and.
And and it's changing a lot and you can't keep a stable image and it's like, well, you know, there are a bunch of problems both like environmentally and ethically from a later's standpoint, that should stop this from happening. But esthetically this does make sense for this show. Why the fuck would you need that for Thomas Paine to common set? Like, it's just like a bad esthetics.
What are you doing?
It's because you're a fucking hack? Yeah, okay, well yes, no that is a good Just what pride do you have in your work? If you put this out? If I was a filmmaker and it looked like this, I would just stop making movie.
Like It's just it completely devalues whatever catalog he has.
I mean I like it.
I mean I actually like some of Aronofsky's stuff. But if you know anything about him at all, like this makes total sense. The guy is a just has.
He has he done anything good after Black Swan?
I like, I mean he did, don't like it. I haven't seen it.
I mean he did the Well. I haven't seen the Well. I was going to see cot Stealing. I just never got around to it. It seemed like it could be.
It's exactly that kind of movie. It's exactly The.
Swan. What was that the wrestler came out for Black Swan. I think he's got some OK movies, but he also steals. He loves stealing Atham's careers.
Wow, there you go, so well, there you go. It's very appropriate. I also love the idea that they used AI for the opening of Secret Invasion, which had like Samuel L. Jackson in it. I don't know, like very expensive actors, so years of footage, like you just cut together without spending any money. I don't know.
It's I think it's the thing where it's like I've been trying to like figure out exactly why because I've felt this and a lot of people have felt that AI just feels bad, and I've drilled down, I think on on like as much as I can, because there's so many different parts of it that feel bad. But I feel like there has to be like a source of the bad feeling. And like, I think the bad feeling with AI is if you put aside the environmental factors, because of course that is like one of the main
ultimate bad things. But the reason why it personally feels bad in the world is it just it is constantly pushed onto us in a way that it's like, oh, you're gonna love this AI. It's gonna be here. You're gonna not. Everything's going to be AI. It's going to take your job. You should consulted about what temperature it is outside. It can tell you if a glove is good for snow. Is like it's stuff like that, for example.
But it's like stuff like that. It feels like it is just like people that the tech world is like, you will like AI and you will not complain about it, and if you do, we are the victims.
And that's why I think it feels bad.
I can't like. I actually do think that leads into one of my definite predictions, which is when AI shits itself and dies, because I think it's going to end up being on device or really expensive, like expensive in a way that just no sane person would pay for. I can't wait for the articles and boosters where it's like, look what you.
Did, Millennials kill their eye look at it.
Really it's gonna be like millennials killed like, look, we had this amazing thing that sometimes got things right sometimes and cost it costs ten dollars to make one dollar, and codis were able to write at and thendeterminately faster speed, and.
After you were done ransacking all of gardens, you went to AI.
Yeah yeah, gear like Gary V or maybe the other one of the garys. We'll have an article about, like, oh, you've never lied before.
What's really What it's just is people without culture or sensuality trying to do both. I think the AI video doesn't look good because it looks it looks like a next Netflix movie in that it's got this kind of pallid color palla. But also when people look at each other, they're not looking in each other's eyes.
Yeah, that's all.
And the shadows are off, like they are in a bunch of like Netflix features now, Like the shadows are really off and it's really off putting, and so nothing looks like a movie anymore. And AI kind of triples down on that where the lighting is bad, the shadows are off. But to me, the like the issue is
AI writing is no, yeah, grotesquely bad. And and I I say that not because it is like I've had writers submit to me pieces that from a technical perspective or worse than if an AI had generated the piece, but like it's great. I mean it's you're a new writer that yeah.
Dude a reason.
I'm right here, but like, but like the problem is that like their writing has like character, right, and their writing has a distinct voice and it needs to be honed and it needs to be refined or whatever. But like AI doesn't have character, it doesn't have a voice. And they don't mean that because it's a machine. I mean that because I have read thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of words written by A and it all sounds the exact fucking saying.
Yeah.
And so when I see a tweet or I see like that editorial image from people dot com, I just see a tweet or a snippet from an article, and I can immediately tell it's AI because it has this like been all voiceless kind of.
Same thing at the end too, We're like, imagine just talking. I'm American, so I'll imagine a Hamberger article will end by saying it's not a Hamber it's a lifestyle. It always has the end that it's the ultimate tell.
It's not just the food it's yummy.
No, no, yeah, that's that's something I feel like. Yeah, Caleb, you and I have talked a lot about on our show, Killed the Computer where it's like we've sort of peeked into the world of like people dating AI a lot, and whenever we read people talking about or to their their AI partner or or like, you read these conversations and it's I don't see a human quality in this, but yeat, this person is human?
Ever talk to me like that. I would shoot myself tonight.
There's no humanity in it, and it's very weird. It's weird to see that people see humanity in it because to me, it's I am very clearly reading generated text from a machine.
Yeah. I also like when people like, yeah, I went and talked to chat GPT about my relationship problems. That is just a breakup. Just you if you find yourself going to chat GPT to ask it for coaching through a breakup, or like, is my partner right here? Just just fucking what.
I do love those.
I do love those, the specifically that it's am I in the right, but like not going to Reddit.
That will never tell me I'm wrong?
My god, what do you do if it tells you you're wrong?
The regenerate button You're five? Yeah good?
The New model where I used to tell them everything they wanted to hear. Yeah, there's one woman that was like it was like I need the chat cheeps something like I need to be clear like I'm not going to rescue you or I'm not going to save you or whatever. She's like upset about it.
It's so funny you're you're talking about that the hashtag keep four Oh.
I've been digging into the.
Yeah, so I've been doing enough of that that like my phone gives me notifications from these subreddits of people the bad chat cheepy Tea, and it's just it's just like one after another of like them threatening to like fly a plane into Sam Altman.
I'm yeah, there's one. There's one where it's like a hamster standing outside of a building. It says a prey eye on it and so says never four oh, get you know how?
You know how like a wine mom with like blue hair was one of the people that went to Nick Fuentes' house and like got preppers right. This is like that version of it. It's the median average, like random person in these AI communities is going to like, actually, I probably shouldn't be saying this. You know what I'm gonna say.
They're gonna ye bet yeah, yeah, yeah, I poly market.
Yeah.
And as we wrap up here, I just I just looked up the hashtag keep four oh thing and I'm looking at this image where it's just people running with like it looks like a relay race. I guess that says keep four oh. They keep dropping the baton. We just wanted the one that worked, you know, that's how batons work. But my favorite part of this image, which I'm going to share with all of you, is the fact that there's a guy with like they've all got helmets for some reason, and their arms are folk going
the wrong way. Some one of the helmets just has a mouth on it, and someone has they have an eyebrow by their nose.
I also like that in this image, the one that they say is the one that works is the one that's not running in the track.
But awesome, don't function.
This is maybe one of the greatest posts I've ever seen, one of the greatest AI posts ever. Just it's so long, it's it's got every quality of an incredible post that you need.
Here.
All right, let's wrap it there, June Caleb, well pe find you.
We do, Yeah, you can shoot.
I feel like I was more annoying than you on this outside.
No, no, I I intro the episode being mean to end, I feel like that. But no, I I guess I can.
I can do it.
I'm bad at pitching. But what I will say is, Caleb and I we do a show called Kill the Computer. It's a show about how the Internet sort of influences and uh, actually I don't know this is edited, right, Caleb? How about you do it? Cut me out of I need to work on my pitches. I need to work.
No, please, Yeah, I would say it's like it's a show where we just kind of look at how the Internet is internet stuff inner culture spills out to the real real world, and how it affect us on our personal level. I guess the most high bround way to say it is just different a subculture analysis of different how different kinds of people use the Internet.
Absolutely hell yeah, and a reef people can find you where at wide Left dot football where I talk about football. Yeah. And I'm just gonna say to the people that really didn't enjoy the Super Bowl episode last year, like you have any idea how close I was to just only talking about football for fifty like to hear they released Tyreek Hill like going no, no, no, no, dude. We're gonna end the episode there. Thank you all for listening to Better Offline. There will be a monologue this week.
I assume download the episodes, read the newsletter, I met Zichean, and goodbye. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at better offline dot com or visit better offline dot com to find more podcast links and
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