Also media, Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed ze trick as ever. Go to the episode notes to sign up to the newsletter. Please do the premium hotel Mike mmoney, buy a Fun Data Center's T shirt, or join one of the assorted communities if you ever want to fall further into the larger Zetron verse. But today we're joined by the author of More Everything Forever. That's right, journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker. Adam, how you doing?
I'm doing well? D How are you go?
On new podcast, don't you?
Yeah? I do. It's called Dreaming Against the Machine and it just came out pretty recently.
What's about, Well.
It's uh, it's like a more optimistic version of this podcast.
Okay, No, I like that. I like this. I want to hear about that. Tell me yeah.
So, uh, you know, I spent a lot of time when I was writing my book More Everything Forever thinking about terrible people and they're bad ideas about the future, and that made me want to think more about good ideas about the future and people who I actually like. And so the podcast is about, you know, trying to imagine what a realistic, good future could look like, yeah.
Could you give me some examples?
Oh no, I have no idea.
Oh okay, yeah, still work in that one out.
Yeah, still figuring that out. I mean that's that's sort of the podcast is me thinking out loud about these things with different guests each week. So yeah, I mean, it's certainly a future where we've found a way to wrench power away from these tech billionaires. And it's not a future that involves like, you know, space colonization and super intelligent AI. But more than that, I'm still figuring that out. That's that's what the podcast is for. Yeah.
I do get a good amount of people who email and are like, yeah, well why don't you to do you talk about more positive things on the show? A it's tough to find them. But but also sometimes when I do it, people get mad at me. Yeah, but people are like, I don't think that you missed the shill. I don't think you mind people being mad at you ed I yeah, I don't. But at the same time, it's like when I'm like, I mentioned this Nebula X
one projector thing, I really like, it's quite expensive. It's like this insane thing in like a box as a projector. It's like, got the speakers you could plug in and they're all wireless and it's beautiful. That works every while. I talked about that once and I have people email me saying, Edge, you're a shill. You're being a shill. You can't And it's like, oh my Christ, do I have to hate everything? Because there's plenty I do, don't get me wrong. Yeah, don't get I feel like you
get plenty. Yeah, But I feel like there are some really good things. Like I feel like if America was not under the gustocracy right now, we would be in a kind of golden era of solar. Like I have solar in my house in Vegas barely pain electricity bot. It's kind of magic. It's kind of amazing. Yeah.
But yeah, no, I mean there's there's a lot of great technology, and solar is a really good example. Like the solar technology has gotten really great, battery technology has gotten really great. I think that these are wonderful things. And yeah, if we weren't subsidizing fossil fuels and actually thinking clearly about both what is the you know, the cheapest and most effective sources of energy and what would
be best for the climate and the planet. You know, I think it would be pretty clear that we'd be going through an even faster energy transition than we are already.
Wouldn't energy also be cheaper if we were a mass solar I'm sure someone's gonna hate me for saying that.
I think that's true. You know, I have to look at the numbers, but I mean, solar is I believe the cheapest source of energy at the moment has been for a bit.
What if instead we could just have natural gas everywhere, which is very cheap, I'm hearing at the moment. Yeah, there's lots of it. Nothing's happened to the supply. Everyone's fine, Yeah, everything's fine.
Nothing is broken, and we're getting really tired of winning.
Yeah. Talking of thinking though, But just just before we got on like one of the most insane things I think I have heard a tech CEO say, and I say, this is someone who s heard Alex's carp speak before Mark Andreasen's saying he doesn't have introspection.
Yes, this was kind of my favorite thing that's happened recently, you know, right for values of favorite, where I mean like horrible and unhinged. But yeah, no, he he said that he doesn't introspect, and that introspection was invented in the A one hundred years ago by Sigmund Freud, And like, Okay, what do you think that? I don't know? Hamlet was about what did? All? Right?
What was Hamlet about? Hamlet was about a guy who cried a lot when his life was awesome. Same with Macbeth, same deal exactly, Like what does smithsone dream? Drugs?
But like what does he thinking?
Shakespeare life on a.
Yeah, exactly, like all art, like any any any form of art pretty much ever created by anyone at any point in history. Like why does he believe this? I think you know it doesn't think he doesn't he doesn't introspect.
But what's going on in that magical brain all the time?
That magical brain, the egg like brain that he hasked.
The fuck it like to robot nank.
Yes, Yeah, it's.
So funny as well, because I don't. I'm constantly introspective to the point where I'm like tearing up my own theories and things that I've done about again and again and again. It's one of the enjoyable things about being human.
Yeah, exactly.
And one's ability to reflect yeah, does kind of make sense when you look at all the AI stuff though.
Yeah, I mean I think that for someone like Andreeson, he's gotten so wealthy and so powerful, he's not used to hearing no, And introspection from that perspective is just an opportunity to tell yourself no. And why would he ever do that to himself? But you know lllm's definitely never introspect. They're not really capable of it. Uh yeah, And you know we uh, we've got this chain of
reasoning stuff that's supposedly like introspection, but it's not. And I think that if you don't introspect, that's gonna make it so much easier to be fooled into thinks that these things are thinking.
Yeah. And also I like the chain of thought reasoning because if you think that's what thinking's like, you must not think so hard, yeah, because it's just what is thinking? Well, every time I hear literally anything, I think, what would they what do they mean by that? One of my it's like every single thought you have as a Tucker Carlson monologue, what do they mean? What is that?
Yeah?
What do you mean? How's my day? How's my day to day? It's the afternoon, is it like, is it just the daytime? Do I care about nighttime?
Now?
Does this person care about me? Do they care about my family? What's going on here? Just like in this constant state of like confusion, yeah, and then using way too much, way too much energy to just go yes, fine, yeah, this is fine. I'm alright, you know, yeah, keep yourself busy. It's just what I don't get, is what I mean. I take that back, Yeah, I actually totally get this. But if you're that rich, you have so much more time to do so many more interesting things and think
about them. For example, yeah, you know, just like a book or like a song, or at that price, at the amount of money that he has, he could just be like, I wouldn't mind seeing I don't know, public enemy. I bet I could just call all of them and pay them all to just do a concert in my
living room. I don't think Mark Andrews is a big public Enemy fan, but just for the sake of examle right, yeah, and it's very It gets me back to this thought I've had this whole time with the LM era where it's like this is just the digital Dunce cap era This is when we find out all the people who just have not been thinking the entire time, who just they all they've been doing is just walk around going like money, money, money and growth as it like Facebook is,
and like he reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg. Give him a million dollars. Wait, he needs ten million dollars. Give him twenty just in case someone else gives him ten. Just this constant state of like anger, great anxiety.
Yeah, I mean, god, what was it? I saw this this LM startup advertising somewhere online that was saying that they were, you know, going to do your intellectual labor for you, and they were going to do your homework for you and stuff like that in school. And I'm like, do you know what intellectual labor is? Saying that you're gonna do it for me? Because they were saying, then you just get to reap the benefits of the intellectual labor.
And I'm like, okay, saying that you're going to do it for me and then I get to reap the benefits. It's sort of like saying, you have a robot that's going to do pull ups badly, and if I just watch it do pull ups badly, then I will somehow get stronger. Like that's just not how it works, That's not how thinking works.
What kind of reminds me. I saw this Andre Corpat. You remember Andre Corpath, he's the cound one of the many co founders of open ai. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he he posted this thing the other day. He was like, yeah, I was spending hours working on like a private wiki for all of his research. Not his research project, but stuff he was like looking into strongly. And it's like and it's like yeah, and then you can use an LLM to ask you questions. It's like why, like just why,
Like I would get it? If he was, like, to be clear, if he was saying, I, as a scientist, I'm collecting tons of data and I want to have it in a place I can poke at it. Fine, it didn't seem like he was suggesting. It's very much like just researching the stuff he was looking at on like his personal knowledge basis. It's like, what is going on in your brain? Mate? What are you thinking about
all day? It's just like, oh, wouldn't it be great if all these thoughts I was having were in a wiki format and obsidian I mean on christ oh, So.
The whole point of a wiki is that anyone can edit it. Why does he want anyone to be able to edit something that he's using.
Well, it's not anyone, it's just him. It's just him. But it's just his wiki, right, But that's just.
But that's just a document, that's just like a word document that's I don't know this is.
Now I don't either. And I there was a guy underneath there who I'm going to be in a newsletter I'm working on today that will actually be out before this whatever. Yeah, and there was a guy below benef he said, yeah, I'm doing a less professional version of this using openclaw. It's like to catalog what great thoughts exactly. That's what grand missives from the depths of the brain minds.
Do you fuck wits have whats going on? Because every time I see my new game is too anytime I see someone just being like I'm running eleven agents concurrently and they're doing this and that, I try and find what it is they're working on. I've never been able to. Never there are images of like there's like a photo of them with like nineteen terminal windows the CC usage saying they spend two and a half thousand dollars and
a one hundred dollar a month subscription. But you can never just like look at them, well, oh wow, you're cooking.
They don't know what they're working on half the time, right, They've got one of those processes is like an agent where they asked it, oh, come up with ideas.
Right, yeah, come up with ideas, work on an interface an interface series to observe in figma, and then have another have another agent look at that and say this is the one, and then at the end something will happen.
I'm sorry, can we can we just pause for a second the fact that there's something called Figma, Like it's just a liigma joke. I don't understand it is. How did they do that?
Yeah? But Figma's kind of use like.
Absolutely, I'm not I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm just saying the name.
Then is having to walk around saying Figma, Yeah, it's kind of like having to say Hadop yes, a dupe or super bass yeah, Versal's fine. But there are a lot of even anthropic is a stupid name. I don't know. I like, I think we need to return to an era well where we only let Taiwan name our companies
because look, you got on High Precision Limited. Now there's a company name Taimewan Semiconductor manufacturing corporations know exactly what they do exactly nothing fancy, don't need to You got Quanta. I assume that that's something to do with one of their founders. Maybe they named it. If you named it before the eighties, it's fine, But like, no more startup names. You can't do dot lee and anything fig but nope, call it like I don't know, art corporation, dot bits,
I don't care. Just make this easier for me. But nevertheless, it's we were always talk about this before. And there is another theory that I'm growing with LLLM as well, which is, and I'm specifically leading to the journalists using AI one, it kind of feels like all of these agentic quote unquote processes are taking up more energy than just doing them normally.
Yep, yeah, I think that's exactly way more. Yeah, because like you know, all of this just feels like people trying to avoid the hard work of having to think right, especially if you're looking at people using this instead, you know, as a way of writing. The old saw is that writing is thinking, and I also think, you know, I mean another old saw is that writing is rewriting, right, And so when people say, oh, I'm just using it for editing, and like that's part of the writing process.
If you're using it for editing, you're using it for writing, and that's like that's not good.
This Wired piece is particularly bizarre, Like I don't need to think about Kevin Bruce too much, don't thinking. He certainly doesn't, and I won't. But Alex he'th Alex Is Alex is weird one because he's been around tech journalism for fifteen something years. Doesn't seem like a terrible bloke. But he describes this process of writing his newsletter that's says where he's where he claims he feels like he is cheating and he and I quote Max Seth the
Report of Word. He sat down with me last week to showcase how he's integrated anthropics, Claude, code, work, cowork even into his journalistic process. The AI tool is connected to his Gmail, Google calendar, Granola AI transcription service, and notion notes. He also built a detailed skill, a custom set of instructions. It's text file to help Claude write
in his style, including the Ten Commandments of writing. Like Alex Heath, the skill includes previous articles he's written, instructions and how he likes his newsletters to be structured, and notes on his own voice and writing style. Then Claude Cowork then automates the drafting process that used to take place in his head to your point, you were completely correct. After the agent finishes its draft, Heath goes back and forth with it for up to thirty minutes, suggesting revisions.
It's quite involved process, and he still writes some parts of the story himself, but Heath says the workflow saves him. I was every week and that he's now spends thirty forty percent less time writing Yeah, mate, how much time do you spend prompting yeah?
And also thirty to forty percent even if that's accurate, thirty to forty percent less time in order to produce something that's writing in the smeared out voice of the internet. And yes, you're trying to get it to write more like you, but come on, and and also you know, I just I don't understand why they would be willing to relinquish not just the process, but also the sort
of like intellectual ownership. I don't mean like you know, in the in the like intellectual property sense, but like the like the I wrote this, yeah, and like the way that you know something when you wrote it that you can't know even if you were there for the editing, like I know, I mean, I you know, I'm I'm getting older, as we all do until we die. And as I get older, my memory is, you know, not
as good as it used to be. I think it's still pretty good, but you know, I have trouble remembering all sorts of things that I didn't used to have trouble remembering. But I know the stuff that I've written inside and out because I was in there, you know, in the trenches with it writing it, and so I know it, you know, chapter and verse. Why would you give up having that kind of knowledge of your own work and your own thinking.
Well, that's the thing. Look for me with my writing as well. It's not just like the writing and the reading all that. It's I will be writing something and I will think, and in my case it will be like did the information mentioned in June twenty twenty four the Open Eyes annualized revenue, Like I will go through
it insane chain of events in my brain. But it's because of my interaction with the work that I remember that stuff isn't just eat and then I linked a thingy and then think it was way that reminds me of something I was working on in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty five. And I'm not sure that. I'm not sure that these people have had that joy of an experience.
Yeah.
I don't even mean this condescendingly. I just mean there is a certain joy to being like way I remember this and digging something out that you painstakingly read and probably didn't even use at the time. Yep. Yeah, No, it's and it sucks. And also it seems like more work. Yes, I agree, this seems like way more work to me, Like I am, okay, I connect all of these things and I make sure they work, and I've written a long text document. Also, he says that it's got all
of his old articles in it. Wouldn't that fill up that context window anyway? Yeah, putting all that technical stuff aside?
Yeah yeah, yeah, No, I mean, I just I don't understand, because like, if you don't write it, then you're not thinking your way through it and like, yeah, Okay, I go into writing something and I have sort of an idea of what it's going to be. But it's as I write it that I realize what I actually think about these things. And I get to a spot in the writing where I'm stuck, and I realize, Oh, I'm stuck because there was something that I thought I understood,
or two ideas that I thought were connected. Now I'm realizing that connection is is less clearer, my understanding is less good than I thought it was, And so I have to sit down and work it out, or I have to go check an idea that I realized I was taking for granted and maybe it wasn't true, and like and then this stuff is out there in the world with my name on it, and I just can't imagine having something out in the world with my name on it that I wasn't you know, dead sure of
and felt that I had thought my own way through on Otherwise I'd die of shame.
I same. Yeah, like, I FuG stuff up. I might typeos people love to email me about them, Yeah, they sure do, more than they say nice things in fact, But it's it's the beauty of that beauty of that fuck up that makes it mine. But on top of that, Yeah, though you have said this, and call Newport recently said it as well, where it's people are scared of thinking, and I extend that to cal also said concentration. I
extend it to friction. I think that that moment you just describe when you're like, wait, what what does that mean? What does that mean? Wait?
What do you no?
Wait? I don't get that that moment is deeply uncomfortable. That is introspection. Yeah, like, and it sucks and when you don't like I spent a lot of last night learning about the Japanese economy makes me curious little critter, and it does tie into things in worrying ways. But and there were moments where I'm like, great, okay, oh the plaza record, what's that? Oh? Christ, they have to learn another thing. Oh what's the Oh there's some sort
of dilemma, oh, Japanese economies. And there were constant points I'm like, what is this? Why am I fucking stupid? Why don't I understand this? But that's how you get smart, that's how you learn thing, and you I don't see how you do that having an LLLM burp stuff up for you, even if it's based on things you have said.
Yeah, No, I think that's exactly right.
Yeah. Also, if it's just reading stuff you've written before, is that like, at some point it's going to stop being you entirely because it's just eventually it's just going to be more AI than person. Very weird.
Yeah. No, I I completely agree, and you're also I mean, this to me is bringing me back to something that I said I think the first time I was on your podcast, which is that in a way, this is taking the sort of billionaire experience and making it like the billionaire cognitive experience and making it available for everyone because billionaires never have to do anything uncomfortable like think.
Yeah.
I mean, it's also reminding me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which I just found and I'm gonna read it to you. Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin, all your chairs cost twenty thousand dollars in weigh two thousand pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment, it's probably it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day.
Yeah, I think i'd be fine. But yeah, yeah, I mean I would be good. I think a billion dollars, i'd be just fine. I feels like a skill issue to me.
Oh, it's definitely a skill issue, although you're also yeah, you have the of you know that the arrested development meme of like, no, it never works for anyone else, but it just might work for us.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, people fool themselves into think this would work for them.
Yeah.
I also think that there is a busy box mentality to it as well. When you start using these things, and it's very clear from the moment you start using them that they will not just do anything on their own. You can't just be like do this yep, Like just just check this out. What will you do this? And it spits out lots of stories about things being one shotted, but very few actual examples that matter to me or
really anyone I talk to. It's like, oh, it fixed one problem, but you can't just say do this entire task. So once you've done that, I don't know. My reaction to that is always the fuck is this? I don't log onto a website, have it break, and then go
that's okay, I use another website. But I think that there is something about the experience that because it's so convoluted and you have to contrive all of these little doo hickeys like fucking pee wee Herman making breakfast, yet when you get to the end of it, you're like, wow, I'm so smart, I made I made it do this. But also I'm going to give it credit for the thing that I ended up doing most of the work on, if I'm honest, right, I.
Mean, but this is also this is part of why I think the people who are most convinced that this is going to take over every job and one shot everything are so often software engineers, because yeah, okay, this thing is changing the way that people code and does seem to be able to, you know, write some code for some people, But you know, that's a limited human task, right, and even for people whose job is, you know, to be a software engineer, the actual writing of code is
just one part of what the job is. And the thing that's I think that the trap that these people fall into a lot of the time is they believe that their job software engineering writing code is like the the ultimate human intellectual achievement, and so if you have something that can do that, it must be able to do anything, and that.
It's just not true. And it can also it can do that kind of yeap, Like it's like it can write code, yep. But no one also can seem to explain what that means in the end, because all these companies, it does sound like you've got companies where you've got a bunch of people just not writing any code. And I hate to ask, now what, Yeah, like really they're not firing anyone, and largely across the entire software that things seem to be getting worse.
So yeah, good, I mean it's question Mark, Yeah, I mean Anthropics, Uh, cloud code, you know, code based dropped and they're like, yeah, we wrote a cloud code with cloud code. And then there are a bunch of coders in there saying yeah, and tell that you did.
I also love that we're meant to be scared of Claude Mythos. This thing that can find but this obvious marketing trick. Yes, that can find any number, It can
find every vulnerability at everything. And that's other than the fact it required human human people to actually find the vulnerabilities and coaching yep, and indeed, like one of the main but one of the main exploits free BSD was not actually exploitable, but you could just make it crash and regardless, but they couldn't find the vulnerabilities in their own software.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, like I'm very willing to believe that it's a helpful tool for finding certain kinds of vulnerabilities. But you're completely right. This is a marketing gimmick.
Come on, it is. And it's also I'm kind of honestly a little bit scared of how well it worked on people, Like how many people just like, yeah, this is the scariest thing ever, I wise, I couldn't see it.
It's because we've got this this narrative that comes out of these you know, AI cults like the rationalists, that that AI is going to take over the world and be able to, you know, make itself super intelligent and end humanity once it's able to write its own code and all of that's just a sci fi fantasy, but you know, it makes it very easy for anthropic to do these sorts of marketing gimmicks or oh man, I
don't remember who it was who pointed this out. But someone I saw someone online say, it's not just that it's a marketing gimmick, it's also that this is a way of sort of soft launching it as an enterprise only product that's not available to the general consumer.
And you could you can tell the kind of toying with that idea too, But it's not really obvious what the plan is. Yeah, because the way they sell this shit is having one million different guys with an AI avatar on Twitter posting that this is what changes everything every time they do anything. Yeah, And I just I've also been playing a fun game, which is called go and try and work out what these big integrations do. It's not a very okay. When I say it's fun,
I mean it's exhausting. Because I went on the gold the Goldman Sachs and Ananthropic. They're automating accounting and compliance roles. And but don't worry, the firm is in the early stagings stages of developing agents based ananthropics model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. What are those functions? Who the fuck knows? They don't say. They just don't say. They like they don't because they probably don't have an answer. I want to. I want
to see those contracts. I want to see the actual outcomes. But it's I mean, this is kind of a vague point to say, but I feel kind of insane that we're still talking about it on this level. It's still we're still talking about it, like we're trying to establish whether the Sasquatch exists.
Yeah, I mean, I just the the amount to vibe based crap around all of this, like to me, I mean, because of my background as an astrophysicist, to me, like the the number one thing that is clearly just vibes is this whole push for orbital data centers, which is just like what the stupidest well.
I feel that we might discussed this before, but it's like, isn't isn't the amount of power they create like it wouldn't they Isn't it an insane amount of power for like one mega walk. I haven't looked too deep into the tag yet, I don't I.
Don't remember how much they like, I don't remember how like what the what the numbers are for power generation, but I know that bleeding off heat is a serious problem, and so because like space is a vacuum. Vacuum is an insulator, and so even though it's cold, you can't actually get rid of the excess heat very well. And so you need these giant radiator veins that are bigger than the entire International space just for one night the center. Yeah,
and it's just not going to happen. And that's just one issue. You've got the radiation, You've got the fact that you can't upgrade the damn thing without doing a spacewalk, Like, what what the hell are they thinking?
So I just looked at up real quick projects like star Cloud. I aim for roughly eight killer what of power in early prototypes.
That's not enough.
Well, just to give you some context, an MVL seventy two of GB two hundred seventy two GPUs is about one hundred and forty two killer watts. Yeah, so that's probably not gonna work. No, that's but you know what, that's also insane. I read about that. I read a headline about that, I think in the New York Times
read one and CMBC. It makes me think that if I was an evil person, like a had a top hat and like a little curly mustache of some sort, like I could just get so far just being like, yeah, you know, I used them all the other day and it actually is fully alive. He's fully alive, and it told me it's coming for your job specifically, and then just go on being verified and like give them the I'll be like the aibot came up with this, mate,
they're gonna come. They're coming for your wife. I would be on the front page of New York Times, terrifying message from British traveler. Yeah, I would just claim I was from the future like that would be in that Kevin Russ would be immediately intrigued.
It's funny, I was I was about to say, Kevin Russ would believe you.
Yeah, no, I think he would hit me with a beancan like Silah in heroes little reference for those listening remember heroes from decades ago. But it's just it's frustrating as well, because even though you've got the big blinking warning signs and you especially like you've really gone deep into how nutty these billionaires are and how distant the things they're saying are from reality, it is ours are still somewhat of a niche belief, which is strange. Still.
Yeah, it's like, I know, I know, it's like we're the reality based community and somehow this is not the dominant narrative or even one of the dominant voices in the narrative. Instead, it's like, Okay, you know, there's a few of us, and the crazy people are just louder, And.
How do you see any of this going? Like, just you don't have to come up with a perfect dance here, I realized someone on the spot. It's like, how does this realistically go from here? Because even putting us out the economics, it doesn't seem to be getting better in a way that matters.
Yeah, I mean, we're in a bubble. It's going to crash at some point, right that bubble is gonna pop. And at that point, I'm not completely sure what's going to happen. It's going to depend on you know, where we are when the bubble pops, what happens, or what's happening when it pops. But you know, I think that we're going to see a few things, right, We're going to see I I would like to well, there's a
few different things that can happen. Yeah, sorry, I'm stumbling over my words here, But like I think I think that what the tech industry or the leaders of the tech industry would like to happen at that point is they would like to use the fact that by then, you know, that they will have and kind of already have you know, eaten all of the new computing hardware and you know, created these giant data centers and try to repurpose them for something else, because at this point,
you know, like it's it's you know, hard to get a stick of ram if you're using it for a giant data center. And I think they love that, right. They want everyone to be using cloud computing and not doing any computing on their own actual computers. So they want to you know, take that power that they've taken
and keep it. And so they try to come up with with some other thing to be the next hype cycle that will incorporate, you know, the earlier hype cycles of AI and crypto and all the other stuff that came before, and say, oh, no, no, no, this is the big thing and it's going to make all of the other things work, and it will be different this time, we promise, guys, we swear the same way that they did with this versus crypto and it's going to be the same people shilling it, both in the industry and
the industry watchers. You know, the same way that Kevin Russ was a shill for crypto, now he's a show for AI in any event that's with quantum. Yeah.
If you see if Kevin Russ writes about quantum, yep, that's how you know the AI bubble is best.
Yeah. I think that's probably right.
He's right for the exits.
Yeah, No, I think that's exactly right. But that's what the industry wants, right.
You know.
The other or another way that it could go is when that bubble pops, you're going to see the current AI backlash, which I think that outside of the tech industry, AI is not actually very popular at all, and I think that people in the tech industry really underestimate that.
And if there's a bubble that pops and that leads to a crash, that's going to supercharge the backlash against AI in a way that the tech industry is just not prepared for, I think, And I would like to see that into some kind of reckoning.
So I want to be I'm going to lead into a sentence that you're going to almost immediately guess what I'm talking about. I want to be clear that what happened to Sam Lman, the person who threw a multip cocktail of the person that's through that shot, that is morally reprehensible. You cannot do that. It's disgusting. I'm against him.
I will say that these that I'm surprised that these companies are surprised because it's like, for the best part of four years they have said, we are taking your job. We need everything as you a regular person struggle to
get credit or thrive or pay your student loans. Like in everything's more expensive, everything sucks, but we the AI industry get whatever, whatever we want, and our explicit goal is to take your job, and the thing we own will control everything and all sources of income and everything will go through us. You should be scared, because we're scared too. I feel like they should have seen this guy.
Don't think it should happen to them. I want to be really clear for legal reasons, but it's like, why are they surprised, Like this is exactly the like you've been scaring mentally, You've been scaring everyone, but mentally, unstan people will also get scared.
Yeap.
And it's horrible. And it's horrible because it's like, I don't want more of this to happen, but I don't see how it stops.
Yeah, No, I mean I they are not used to their actions having consequences. Yes, And again, you know billionaire brain right, when you're a billionaire, of your actions pretty much don't have consequences. In a way, again, what happened with sam Altman and the Molotov cowtail that is morally reprehensible, that stuff should not happen. But in a way, the reason that was a headline was that it was a billionaire who almost faced a consequence.
Yes, and someone who has said and it was I've recently checked this since I think it was April twenty twenty three. Sam Altman has been saying, I'm scared of what we're building. Yep. Dario ama Day has been saying for years, this will destroy all white collar labor. Yep. They have been saying we always need more compute and as I think though, but regular people face this as well. I don't think an average person feels like they are taken super seriously by the world. Yeah, the world does
not feel hospitable to the average person. But every time an AI person says literally anything, it's ron page news and it's taken with the complete seriousness. The government has meetings about it.
Yep.
So yeah, I don't know why would people possibly feel angry about any of It's just the thing that I'm saying to say in the newsletters. WHOA, It's like, I think these people should tone down. They've said that we need to tone down the rhetoric. I agree. I think that they should stop talking about the models that the way they do. They also don't see this alarmism with the AI psychosis.
Yeah, no, I mean it's really it's really striking the things that they're willing to sort of incite a moral panic about in the things that they won't right. They want to get people worried about this stuff taking all white collar jobs. They want to get people worried that it's powerful enough to destroy the world, that it's the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity.
Uh.
And they don't want to talk about the people right now, who are you know, going insane and dying because of the existing products that we already have.
Yeah, And I think also, here's the thing that you you will. Did you see the the one of the blokes, one of the blows, the one who threw the Molotov cocktail? Apparently he had posted Judkowski's if if if they build it, will ship myself. Yeah whatever it's called. Yeah, right, and it's just like that everyone does. Yeah, just like, Oh, I don't know, are you surprised that people who have been that you've monetized scaring people and people are scared?
Yeah? Yeah no, And I mean, you know, for all that, Altman says that he disagrees with Yudkowski. Altman also said that he thinks Judkowski probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, which.
Which is one of the more what for Yeah, like what what possibly for strangest man. Yeah, no, these guys weirdest guy, weirdest guy. We have to hear from yod Kowski with the Nobel Peace Prize for strange boy, weirdest, most unnecessary Harry Potter fanfic. Yeah, definitely the new categories in the Nobel But it's just but no, but that's the thing, it's like to your point, Yeah, it's exactly. It is something that Altman claims to not endorse but wholeheartedly does.
Oh, Yeah.
And what's also interesting is I haven't heard anything from Dario ama Day about it.
Nope.
I don't know. You think within a situation like this, Darya Amada wouldn't be like, I'm so sorry it's happened to Sam Ortman is terrible with nothing.
Yeah, no, that is a good point. I haven't thought it.
Kind of respect, yeah, current, No, I kind of respect because like we've really not had men of industry who just fucking hate each other in a while. So I think it's nice to see, nice to see like some classic robber baron shit. But it's and now, as of the morning of recording this open Aye that an internal memo with a clear purpose of being leaked saying that Anthropic is overstating their revenues. It's just it's just it's
really we are getting into the funny part at least. Yeah, the cool zone, as it were, Yes, exactly, that's where we're on. It's so unfortunate it really like this on one level, it's very funny on that how that it's just like we could be done fan house yep.
No, I mean these guys love talking about opportunity costs and like what about the opportunity cost of like you fucking having your money and your position in society, because I think that that's just enormous, for like, the opportunity cost of having a Sam Altman or having an Elon Musk is just so enormous, and they never fucking talk about it because of course they don't.
Have you seen did you hear about SpaceX is excellent economics? They lost five billion dollars last year? Oh god, I.
Haven't heard that. I've been busy with others, like with launching.
You've been busy, like enjoying your life rather than reading about Elon Musk he is. I will give Elon Musk credit. He has invented a new way to fuck up his company, just like just like attaching an AI company to SpaceX, which has useful products like Starlink that people seem to like.
Yep, yeah, no, I mean if it works, then he has to fuck it up right the same way he did with Twitter.
Talking a billionaires. Have you been looking at Gary Tan?
No?
Actually I haven't. What's he been up to?
So he's the head of y Combinat and he's currently experiencing his own AI psychosis sort because he has become he's become this weird like he has this thing called g Stack, which is his claud code set up, and it's just it's literally just at Claude dot mt. I believe it's like and it has people really like it because people want to get into Y Combinator, so they say nice things. But it's been very funny because apparently this website just has like tens of thousands of lines
of code on it. It's like it's it kind of feels like watching a kid at a cinema arcade machine and they just kind of like pull. They've not got any money in it. They just put it at the wheel like Ridge Racer or something, or like time crisis. They got the gunpoint and get the screen. No money in there. It's just very weird because I keep getting back to this thing. It's like the glasses from They Live. We're finally seeing who the Dunces truly are. All of
these people who are allegedly smart are actually the literal opposite. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's unfortunate. Well, why don't we wrap it up there? Adam tell us about this new part us? What what sort of things have you got coming down the pike? What what plans have you got Let's end on a high note.
Absolutely. So the podcast again is called Dreaming Against the Machine and we're launching, I mean, as of this recording, we're launching tomorrow. It was our first real episode. Uh. And we have a bunch of great guests coming up. You're one of them, ed, uh. And we've also got who else do we have. We've got a bunch of the original AI Bias people like Sophia Noble and and Kathy O'Neil. We've got some great sci fi people like Kim Stanley Robinson coming on the podcast.
Uh.
And you know some some of the great scientists as well, like John de Prescott Weinstein who are talking with about Star Trek and and also you know some of amazing haters like you or Dave carp uh. So, yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. The conversations have already we've already got a few episodes in the can and
those conversations have been great. And basically it's going to be a place to try to figure out what a good future might look like and try to look for some hope and be really cringingly sincere and earnest because that's kind of my entire deal.
And I think that's the only way to fight against the darkness. Really, yeah, like it's the only the only real way forward is for the light to win, is to actually be sincere about the things we like. Because as much of a hatreds as I am, I do love the people in this community and the people go, you're awesome, Like we can have cool conversations in the show that not how happening elsewhere. I'm glad that someone is doing something positive.
Thank you. Yeah, I mean that was the idea. It's like, there's enough darkness out there if we want to if we want to win this thing, it's enough to say what we don't like. We got to talk about what we want.
Hell yeah, well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me. We will link to all of your your various escapades in the pro in the episode notes Flawless. They're just gonna keep going. I am, of course, said zitron you can find me on a monologue this week. I'm not gonna surprise you with Ronan Farah interview again, but yes, thank you all for listening. Of course, you catch us on the monologue and we'll have some fun interviews coming up.
Everyone got the boys from This Machine Kills coming as well. Anyway, catch you on the monologue everyone, and thank you Adam for joining.
Us, Thanks Zev for having me, 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 Matasowski dot com, M.
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