¶ Intro / Opening
Zone Media.
This is water extermination, fights cell by cell, through bodies and mindscreens of the earth. Soul's rotten from the orgasm, drug flesh shuddering from the ovens. Prisoners of the Earth, come out storm the studio. This is better offline and I'm at Zetron. We have an incredible studio guest assortment. Today we have the wonderful Victoria song from the Verge, hating Victoria. I'm good geez great, and we of course
of Alison Morrow of CNN CNN Nightcap Newsletter as well. Yes, wonderful, and of course Gare Davis, the wonderful Gear Davis who didn't insult me on Bluesky for being late because I was on time. Of Cool Zone Media, Gear, thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me again, despite our despite our brief fight on Blue Sky tiff.
It was not even a tiff. It was a friendly thing by some merchandise though, if you're listening to it. We have new hoodies, we have new t shirts, we have new hats. We have an upcoming challenge coin that you can spend your money on and it will flow somewhat to me. That's what's great. But today we're talking about artificial intelligence. There have been a few stories in the media. Allison is freshback from vacation, so she has to learn about all the good things that have been happening.
Don't want to start with one of my favorite stories at the moment, and this is the negotiation between Microsoft and open Ai. Now, the negotiation is just to run this down because open ai, by the end of the year needs to become a for profit entity. It's a little more complex than that. It's the for profit part of a nonprofit needs to convert. That alone would be difficult, but Microsoft owns forty nine percent of this company's future
profits and a bunch of other stuff. They get a revenue share, they get right store of their IP through twenty thirty and all these other things. And open ai has said, Okay, what if we give you thirty three percent equity less revenue share and you don't get access to ORIP And understandably Microsoft has said no. So we are in the funniest possible scenario here in the Microsoft could literally just fold their arms and let open ai die.
And I feel like at the moment, this is an underdiscussed topic because this is a gun to Sam Worman's head,
¶ Welcome and Guest Introductions
and everyone's just kind of acting like it's fine. I guess maybe it's just two complex and it's confusing to me why more people aren't a little bit worried. Anyone numbers hard numbers.
That's scary, that's.
Scary, that's yeah.
But I think I think why I'm going so insane about it is this could kill open AI one hundred percent. Like this is they don't turn into a for profit, they're dead dead, And I'm just wondering why everyone's just kind of chilling walking around about it. I feel crazy.
I think it's just the sense that like that seems implausible to most people, like if you look on it, like maybe, but you know, chat GBT is synonymous with AI in the sense that kleanex is synonymous with tissues right now, So you know, we're at a point in time where when you see the big one of of like a tech thing, you kind of feel that they're infallible. It's sort of like saying, well, if Apple doesn't get its ducks in a row with these tariffs, they're fucked,
in which case you're like, are they are they? It's
¶ Microsoft-OpenAI Negotiation Standoff
like a Marvel movie at the end, Are they dead. Are they are they really dead? Or will they come back in some mutated form in Avengers like Part seventy two, The avengein ing right.
And I think everyone's still under the spell of Sam Altman, right, there's a sense that he's the visionary who's going to lead us into this AI utopia. And you know, I at others, you know, a bunch of us have reported that a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. But I think investors and shareholders and people who like frankly, the people who work for him, desperately want to see succeed. I think Silicon Valley wants him to succeed. So maybe it's just a willful blindness.
Yeah, it's the most strange time in history because in Victoria you've written quite a lot about this. When you look at the actual things that this shit does, it don't do that much. Right now, you've been on the lead a on the verge for a few months now, have you seen anything exciting at all?
Define exciting, Anything.
That you looked at and you felt delighted by in any way, Because I'm genuinely curious by delighted.
I think delighted is a strong word.
Have I seen things that have been surprising. Yeah, with some of the Like I wrote a story not that long ago about the what I call the hug and Kiss generators.
Uh yeah, exactly.
So there are these apps there are called Hugging and Kiss AI generators. So you take a picture and like they were advertised in a kind of skivy way where it's just like, oh, you take a picture of you and your crush and make them kiss, and like that's good that you can do. AI doesn't understand what to do with tongues yet, so you know, I was generating very cursed content for the Verge dot com.
That was what those horrible things you're sending me?
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I sent you some horrible things.
Really awful.
It turns to the AI bots. A lot of humans don't know what to do with tongue.
But no, they but they really don't know what to do with the songs, like you know, you're supposed to make people kissing, and so like, I generated a couple of videos of me and Edward Collin because not because I'm like a twyhard but because he was like a preset in the app, right, and you know, you just you just watch yourself kiss Edward Cullen with full on tongue and you're just.
Like, but little wrong tongue.
It's wrong tongue because honestly, it's it's like if you told a toddler what kissing looks like and they just you know, imagined two faces smooshing together and like things coming out of the mouths and odd rhythms. That's what it looked like.
I mean, I could be wrong here, but I assume most of these products are made by straight man who do not know what to do with the tongue.
These apps are just very like, yeah, weird, but you know so I tested them. I deep faked my parents parents at my wedding, and I was like, oh, this makes me feel weird. I have emotions that mom's teeth
¶ Searching For Exciting AI Use Cases
are not correct in this story. But you know so that was just like one of the I think one of the things that I've tested most recently and I went, oh, okay.
This is something.
I mean, the thing that I've seen this with is like this this woman who made like a video of
¶ AI's Cursed Creations and Emotions
like her mom hugging her as a kid, based on like an old picture, right, and it's like this is I've never seen a video of my mom before, and it's you start obsessing over this, this like artificially generated video. When you're ignoring you you actually have a picture of your mom hugging yeah, Like you can look at like that and that actually is her, that is like what she looks.
Like, yeah, versus watching something imagine, not imagine just generate.
Put on like a skin suit of your mom hugging you, which it just isn't like it's weird. The video is not real, but the picture is.
I just it's a bizarre I feel those I felt very judgmental of it before I tried it, and then I tried it and I sobbed.
I like genuinely sobbed because that's interesting.
That reminds me of like the the VR thing where you're like reconnecting with like dead family members only VR headsets, which which yeah, people were very skeptical of. And then I saw saw some people try it in Japan and they like like just totally broke down.
It's just like when I like, I think the phrasing that I used was like, I know it's fake. It didn't look anything like my dad gave him hair. My dad had never had hair in his life, but like the shape of it was enough to like sketch this like part of me that was very much longing for my father to have been able to go to my wedding. So like doing it, I was like, this is weird. I don't feel this is not comforting. I mean it's not comforting, but it's.
Makes you feel bad.
That nausea is like like indicative of like the hyperreality problem. Yeah, which which mean people like like Altman in the whole the whole industry or can you break them rapidly pushing us towards.
On the hyperreality problem? Can you break that down?
Well, I mean, I guess if turn gets used in a few different ways, but it's like the more something is so fake that it's more real than real hmm. And we see this problem with a lot of like the VR stuff, But now now you see this a lot with with a AI generated images which are like quote unquote photorealistic, but they're like two photorealistic because they're being trained on on on a data set of like highly photoshoped images, So it looks like reality, but it
looks more than reality. It's it's it's it's stronger than what reality actually is. Supposed to be and that's like completely poisoning the data set and like this can affect you like emotionally too.
Yeah, and what But the thing is that gets me about this is you look at everything. You look at all the AI stuff and this is a fairly old example at this point. And I'm not I'm not insulting you would. This is nothing bad about your point. It's just they've not been able to find a dude at or a gizmo that at least brings you cheer.
I mean you can if you are twisted, then my mind is twisted. And you'll like come up with some prompts that are truly cursed and no editor will let you publish in good faith, Like yeah, you could have a little fun with it.
I'm talking about a thing that people used to do something normal.
No, yeah, no one, it's I mean it helped that one kid graduate from UCLA.
So there you go.
Which one was that?
Oh, this has just been.
A viral video the past like two weeks of this guy like showing the prompts he used to graduate from college, like during his graduation ceremony.
So cool.
Yeah, that's the thing I've pointed out a lot of that. AI has found a lot of use cases. They're just all kind of bad.
But they don't generate money, right.
They don't generate money, and they take away This will be a metaphor that you relate to. I can't remember who said it first.
It was a tech.
Columnist anyway, it was about letting kids use AI to
¶ Hyperreality and Poisoned AI Data
do their homework is like going to the gym and having a machine lift the weights for you. Like, the point is the process and the learning, and AI just kind of subverts that, which can be useful if you're coding or doing some high level technical stuff. I suppose yeah, not my area.
But but even then, it's like with the coding stuff, they massively overstate what coding like, coding is only one part of the software engineering stack. And even then you can't like help They're like, oh, I could build an entire application? Could it has anyone? Actually, And this is Matt Hughes Murtis that brought this up the other day. How did it all this bullshit Kevin Rucy and bullshit about oh, vibe coding is taking up. I've got seen one fucking vibe coded company.
Man. The phrase vibe code, it's just I haven't heard this before.
Vibe coding is it's horrible.
It's it's it's it's horrible. Like at Google Io they're like vibe coating and I was like, please kill me, because what does it even mean.
It's so, here's what it's meant to mean. It's meant to mean that you, as a person do not understand software.
True.
True, you are able to use the coding thing to build software. And the idea which the massive liberty they take from there is that because someone can do a thing like this, whether it works or not, whether it's secure or not, who cares, it means that someone who doesn't understand coding at all could build a huge company that does whatever. It's kind of like if you saw
¶ Are AI Use Cases Useful?
the watch The Simpsons anyone. Yeah, there's an episode of The Simpsons where they rebuild Ned Flanders his house and like the rooms get smaller and they're like, this room has no electricity, this room has too much electricity, and all the hair stands up. It's like seeing that and being like, holy shit, these people could build a city. It's fucking insane. And of course there is a Kevin Ruth's article in New York Times, so he's like, that's arm. Oh my god, I made a recipe application. It's just
real like peekaboo moments in AI. And I know I've been thinking about AI for what feels like seven years now, but it's only one. But it's just I don't know why more people again, I get the Microsoft Open Air, I think I do, but I don't get why more people aren't more alarm. There's nothing. There's not a thing. There's not a thing that you can point and be like, Wow, this is actually kind of fucking cool. That costs too much money, it requires stealing, it boils legs with all
these things. But at least we have this. Not really, I genuinely, I'm not even asking the question sarcastically anymore. I'm just like anything, anything, anything, one thing that I don't mean kind of works. I mean, this is a tool that I use every day, like a drop box style thing. I don't even mean a filse. I just mean a useful piece of software you can point to and go, I use this, and it's good.
I have I have one, but I don't know how much of it is LM based. Do you use otter in your way?
I do?
Yeah, Like Otter is a dictation service.
Yea transcription.
I was just gonna say transcription.
I was just gonna say clips captioning.
That's like the only thing like Dropbox has integrated like of auto transcriptions for almost all their uploads and then mix My job really easy because I have to do a lot of interviews and now I can just refer to that. If I need a more complex transcription, I could set it to one of our services. But but no, like that's that's it, But like that's LLL Hulm's have been doing that for a long time.
Yeah, it's just transcription. I'm not even being a misanthrope. I'm just so much money is going into this, so much money is not going into other things. And the only thing we're having popped out is, hey, we've got a Google search that kind of works but doesn't and we can do transcriptions, which they did almost immediately. I feel I feel like that like rev had their AI
transcriptions almost immediately. Yeah, they've been around for it at There were various companies I worked with an AI transcription coming dead now A couple of years back with the like twenty twenty three, I think it was. It was like meeting transcription zooms had it.
I was I was using where I was AI transcriptions back in twenty twenty.
Yeah, it's just like it feels it feels like I'm going insane sometimes. It feels like when I read these stories and they're like in the revolutionary power of Ai, but you look at it, it's like you don't even have a funny You have a funny thing. I guess a joker level thing. Yeah.
I think the problem is is just like we are promised one thing. Yeah, you're promised this personalization, this automat, this automation that it's gonna know you. And like we've been fed through so many generations of like science fiction what we think uh ai is going to be. This is not that this requires so much work from you to train it. Like you have to understand the language which with to prompt, chat cept or any of these other ais in order to get something remotely useful. So
you're actually having to learn a new language. And like if you look at the most successful chat ChiPT prompts, they're like four four paragraphs along, they're insane. You have to like you have to be preempting what like this
thing could be like I had. I was just like, you know, to your point about vibe coding, I'm not a I'm like a spreadsheet girly, but I'm not like an advanced spreadsheet early and I was trying to pull some data insights from this set I was looking at, and I was like, Okay, I don't know fuck all about spreadsheet formulas. Besides like the really basic ones. How
am I going to do this conditional logic program? Let me ask chat CHETPT And it took me so long just to figure out the stuff, and it was always wrong. And because I could, like, because I understand math, I could parse out how to fix the completely wrong formulas it was giving me.
But that was such a painful process, and.
So was the output even that good?
Oh no, it was an excellent output. I got a beautiful spreadsheet.
That's cool. I had much time. Would you say you invested two and a half hours? Nice?
You're you're a journalist who understands math, like you're a rare and special Yeah, you know.
It was.
I was just basically like this, the fact that this conditional if and statement is not working, or it's working opposite to what I want for to find this one particular data set is driving me cuckoo for cocoa puffs. It's very simple. I know how to do the math manually. Why can't the computer tell me how to write it to the other fucking computers two and a half hours.
I love innovation, and I think I think that that speaks to the larger problem, which is generative. AI isn't completely useless. If it had been sold as it is, which is kind of niche cloud software, like cloud compute stuff, they wouldn't have been able to fund any of the data centers. If they would have been like, all right, we're going to be able to in two and a half hours give you the world's best spreadsheet, they would it was.
It was a good spread okay, lot the best, Okay, a decent spreadsheet.
The thing even the asterisks have asterisks, and it's it's just I feel like in the feedback I get from listeners is very much that everyone is like a lot. I don't get any emails from people being like, hey, atu man, I have the most useful thing I get the occasional bright spark is like I have, over the
¶ Critiquing AI in Productivity
course of hours, created a very useful thing that I use Sometimes it's like cool, Okay, it's fine. Bidet sounds more useful than that, Like I'm trying to think of like other innovations that exist that could be Yeah, everything is more useful, like Apple pay is more useful than
any of the shit that they've built. But it's this thing where we are being told again and again and again that it's the future, and we're being told that it's this ultracomplex thing that will never understand, which leads really neatly into my favorite story of the week, which is all of you, I assume have heard about this Meta offering one hundred million dollars to Open AI staff and how there's this big talent more and four people
just left Open AI to go to Meta. Alison, you're on vacation, so you missed some of this, which is probably best for your mental health.
Oh I saw a bit. The seven figure bonus story came out right before I went on vacations, so I was getting that.
I can't blame Oh no, get way to a four oh one k that's fat and sizable, Like yeah, no, no.
I think it rocks. I think it's great. I think they should demand There was a part of the erin Woo from the information of a great story about this, where she she was talking about how some people are like, oh yeah, I just threatened to quit and they gave me more money. I would join one of these companies and day two slug fucking quit. Mark, What are you
¶ Generative AI: Niche vs Oversold
gonna do about it? Mark, I'm gonna go right back to Open Ai. They're gonna give me this money and then Mark Zuckerbo will give you whatever you He's been flying them to his house in Tahoe and they're still saying no. That's the best part that people just like, nah, I don't want to, don't want to mate, But it might be because they're all in a weird I'm gonna say click, but I want to I want to believe Polly situation. So all okay, I have no no knowledge
that they're fucking. But the recruits on the list, which refers to the meta list for potential people that they could hire, typically have PhDs from elite schools like Berkeley and Carnegie. Melon They have experienced places like open Ai in San Francisco and Google Deep Mind in London. They are usually in their twenties and thirties, and they all
know each other. They spend their days staring at screens to solve the kinds of inscrutable problems that require spectacular amounts of computing power, and their previously obscure talents have never been so highly valued. So these stories have a thread through them I'm really enjoying, which is that the writer and the companies don't know what these people are doing, and I just feel like they are scamming I think
¶ The AI Talent War and Scams
they're scamming them. Another quote from The Wall Street Journal, Megan Borodowski, I believe it, wrote this. The handful of researchers who are smartest about AI have built up what one described as tribal knowledge that is almost impossible to replicate. Rival researchers have lived in the same group houses in San Francisco, where they discuss papers that might provide clues for achieving the next great breakthrough. We are very aligned
on research directions and interests. One of them wrote, I hope we get to work on more stuff together in the future. They are fucking lying to them. I'm sorry, sorry, they are just making shit up. This has to be I think that this is the funniest thing ever. I think that this is a true revenge of the nerds situation.
Have they reinvented collective bargaining?
They have, They've basically done unionization. It's amazing. It's good for them.
Higher education is really expensive. They have a lot of debt.
Yeah, I love this. I think that they should ask for more money. I think they should all get together and just refuse to take less than fifty million a day, eight figure, site, nine figure, like Sky is the limit? Sam Samon want to burn anything. But back to erin Wouhi.
This is another quote about this which this is from inside the Great AI Talent auction that deals with the free agents and the egosham But a senior leader another of the major AI labs said it was hard to know what research specialties actually mattered for improving AI models. AI is field where researchers are designing such complicated systems that is difficult to break up one aspect of the
work from another, the leader said. Ultimately, they said recruiting often comes down to word of mouth, the game knowing a person or having worked with them before. It's a scam.
Isn't that just like normal job stuff like word of mouth, knowing having worked with someone before?
And yeah, yeah, it feels like hyper focused Silicon Valley.
But stuff generally you know what they did at the job. Generally you do. And Mark Zuckerberger, guy, we did AI. There is a WhatsApp group I think it's called recruitment and it's the party Emoji. And that's where Mark Zuckerberg invites people. He like has this little weird little WhatsApp hot like whole he invites people. He's like, hey, I'm Mark Zuckerberg. Do you want all the money in the world? What do you do? I don't care how many? And apparently one of the metrics they measure them on is
like citations in papers. I genuinely think this is a scam. It's genuinely a scam. I think it's the coolest scam of all time. We find it's nerds versus management consultants.
So nerds versus different types of nerds.
Management consultants are not nerds. Actually, I want to say management consultants are not nerds. They're jocks.
I would agree with that. I would agree with that.
They see it.
They are professional deckmakers about and they go in slide one, we can see that number go up. Yeah, and slide too, we can see number flat. Here's a pie chart.
Someone else made. Yes, that's it.
I can see it.
It's jock shit.
Yeah.
I went to a drama private school. I know everyone, this is not shocking. Yeah, I thank you all boys as well. It's yeah yeah, but I was like the dumbest kid in that school, which is really and I was the fastest as well. So school was great for me. But you run into a lot of people who can memorize a lot of things but don't know how to
put them together. There's no real like synthetic thought. It's all just like, I don't know, like having a big isle of information that they portunly draw from and that they don't really know what any of it means.
Sounds familiar to all the AI fitness summaries that I've been suffering through. I just wrote a thing about.
It that's tell us about that. What's what's the AI fitness ship been doing? This is?
Ah?
Yeah, So I ate it during a run last week. Yeah no, it was too hot outside. Uh and I was you know, I was on the Box union bargaining committee. So I've been like sleep deprived for two months.
Well, so congratulations, yeah, congratulations.
It was it was. It came down to the wire, but we averted a strike. It was real great stuff, uh, and I was I basically was like, oh now time to look into my fitness and wear a wile data from this time period and and kind of gain insights. And it was just like not that it was beyond I called my article the Unbearable Obviousness of AI Fitness nice Summaries because it was just not great. But to my point, I ate it on on this run, like you can kind of see my hands fuck up playing bust,
my knees are fucked up. So like I was basically like, all right, let me see what all of these things said about my data and could I find Could I get these ais to say like, hey, you've been like really strung out over the last two months, your sleep schedule has been supremely disrupted, your metrics are completely off. These are all things I know from looking at my baselines and knowing what they are. But could I get it to say you showed haw like you've shown signs of elevated risk of injury.
Not a single one of them could do it.
And Strava's was like the most egregious because it's like you had an intense run and I had uploaded pictures of my injury. I had like uploaded a note saying that I had like injured myself pretty badly. There was no context of like what I should do with that. It was just it's literally stuff like you ran three point one miles, it was eighty eight degrees fahrenheit. This was slightly higher effort than other efforts that you've made the last thirty days.
Have a nice day.
And I was like, that's not useful when you put it right next to a chart that says the same thing. Your elevation was eighty eight You had an eighty eight feet of elevation gain and it was.
Up and down during your run.
And literally it's next to a thing that says elevation gain eighty eight feet and a graph that shows up and down.
Like it's that there's no intelligence.
Yeah, there is intelligence.
AI, there's no intelligence.
It feels like the thing it should be able to do already.
This is what people wanted to do because at least in my field, where you generate a massive mountain of like quantified self data that you're looking at and you want insights from. I wanted Aura to tell me, like what my average weekly number, like how many hours per week do I sleep on average on a twelve month basis, and then how much of a sleep debt did I incur in this specific week?
And it's like, ooh, we can't do that.
We can only do it the most recent week in the most recent month for Trent, and I was like, that's fucking useless. I have six years worth of AURA data that I should be able to mine for that kind of insight, and I can't do that. So that's not at all useful for what I for like the purposes of what I was trying to prove.
And so I ended up arguing with this thing for like an hour.
But I feel like you did prove something though, yeah I did.
I did, but it was at the same time, just like it's sort of like a wikiped It's like a book report written by a fourth grader who decided to read the entry of the book on Wikipedia instead of actually reading the book for insights.
So it's like a here you go, here you go.
It feels like the most elementary thing it should be able to do. I have over a decade of fitness day up. Yeah, and I still don't have shit. I don't it told my Aura ring the other day, I got Aura, I got somny, I got the thing that electrocutes your head. Yes, why I'm so smart. It's like I just watched the X Files episode with the computer bit and that's what's happening to me. I'm getting electrocuted every day. I got Aura, I got the eight sleep in Vegas. I got also some gumph and I don't
know a single goddamn thing. It told me two days ago. I am like something is wrong. Yeah, I'd slept three hours two days straight. It was just a bad combination of red ice. And it's like, yeah, you should do something about that. Thanks, I'm glad I pay you ten dollars a month for But this just feels like the obvious and how does it not know? How? And maybe it is just the ultimate limitation that we've been complaining about. It's just it's kind of insulting. I don't know.
Yeah, not to feel like I don't want to be the hippie here, because I use Strava and I like track my workouts and things. But it's like I know when I'm tired, yeah, and I know when I'm hungry and when I've eaten too much or eaten too little, Like you know, why do we need the computer to do that for us? Is a real question, and it's part of this like consumer trend of just trying to get AI into every single app on my phone. And it's like, I don't need Strava, Like Strava's doing great
for me for what I need it for. I like it to show me how many miles I ran that week, and like my bike ride to work.
Look, but I.
Wanted it, I like, I would have loved it to be like, Okay, so when you go run after a prolonged break, particularly in hot weather, you have self reported and increased number of injuries.
That's the type of shit that I want.
And so it's like, so seeing that it was really hot after a prolonged injury, you have a real bad habit of getting injured after that. So like you dumb, dumb.
Yeah, maybe the pack.
Do the thing.
So like that is the.
Type of insight I would have liked after this most recent run where I ate it.
Well, the last three months, I've increased my cardio. Shit, I'm playing basketball. I would love to see and it has all the stuff And this doesn't feel that difficult if it could say yeah, your cardio vascula has improved or likes the occasionally be like yeah, you're four years or two years younger than your age cardio. Why isn't this like, oh, don't get started.
¶ AI Fitness Trackers Lack Insights
That mean, don't get me started on those like longevity metrics.
I but just there's nothing useful to it other than I'm a data perva and like looking at the numbers, going hmmm, number up, number down? Why? And but even then the simplest things are kind of hard to get. With Strava. You have to go through like three menus to just see how much you've worked out. There's like eight different options. None of them you can't turn any of them off. There's one about biking because I used
to bike. I don't bike anymore. I don't need that now you need to share the biking, mate, gotta make sure zero miles, you fucking idiot loser. It's just it. It is the wider thing of tech just not being for us anymore. Almost, it's like, hey, got some data, I guess pay me, now, pay me. And even then with Aura and A, I've been using them for five years, six years. No, I've never got a single bit of advice about my sleep. I've never had it. Say hey, what if you did this? Nope, it'll be.
You tried using the chat pot. That's an aura.
No.
I thought about it yesterday and I was like, I'm gonna get angry at this.
It's actually one of the better implements.
Does it work?
It's one of the better implementation If you like, I know how to.
Talk to it, Okay, how do I talk to it?
Well, you have to be very specific about the information that you're wanting. So you're like, tell me about my sleep trend and I've noticed that I have this problem.
What are some ways that I could uh get around that?
Or just like, do I show signs in the past month of sleep irregularities?
If so, like, what are some the.
Thing is like, the things that's going to tell you to do that are actionable are going to be.
Like, well duh right?
Really only helpful if this is your first foray into fixing your health, into fixing your health, if you've literally googled anything before, have any base knowledge of like you should have consistent sleep schedules. You maybe just don't eat ice cream before bed, like common sense things like that. It's just not gonna necessarily help you, but you know other things. I were because I'm also I've got a CGM at the moment, and so it's.
Just like, does that constant glucose Yeah.
Yeah, continuous glucose monitor. And I was like, I've had.
A lot of stress.
Does stress impact glucose levels? And I was like, yes, it does. And I was like, okay, cool, that's nice. Nice to know that it's high because of that, and then it'll remember that when you ask it questions in the future.
So you just have to like you just have.
To talk to it so much and like kind of train it. It's like literally like training a toddler. So the amount of effort that you're putting in versus what they're telling you, like all the insights they'll be so personal, personalized and so automated.
It's like, just have to do all the work to make it useful, which it appears to be the AI theme.
Yeah, you have to.
Do an immense amount of legwork and like training and thinking like an AI in order for it to spit out something that might make you go huh.
Wow, yeah cool. I love living in this wonderful period. I saw Wired mentioned this thing called limitless earlier if you.
Have yes, yes, it's the it's the class. It's like b the thing.
Yeah, I say time, the AI device that constantly listens to you. What is limitless?
Though similar? It constantly listens to you and generates insights based not listening to you constantly.
Stephen Stephen Levy, the Larry Bird of Big Wet Kisses in Tech Journalism wrote about it like it is the future, and it's just like, I just wish some writers would experience humanity just once, because the idea of someone constantly listening is not fun good, nor has it ever really worked.
I don't want to age anyone here, but I feel like we're roughly the same age. And we experienced kind of the revolution of social media as this kind of like, oh, look look at how cool it can be if we're able to connect right in mass, all the time anywhere, And that was cool, that was revolutionary in its time, and now we're at kind of like the denoma of that, and it's turned us all inward. We're all like tracking our personal data and like, you know, we're more isolated
¶ Consumer AI Lacks Useful Advice
than we've ever been. Not entirely social media's fault, but doesn't help. We're like talking to our AI therapists and our AI boyfriends and girlfriends.
I don't know how many people are actually doing that, though I know a lot of them are.
But I think that like the narrative, like the step back narrative right now, is just like, well, there should be a next thing. It shouldn't just be social media was cool and the Internet was cool for a while, and things are getting kind of stale, and it's like, well, what's the next thing. And I think I think tech journalists can be guilty of this sometimes, of feeling like, well, twenty twelve was really exciting, so twenty twenty two has got to be just as exciting, and twenty twenty.
Five, boy can't wait.
Maybe the technology is just not there yet and it's going to take a lot longer than anyone expects.
Or maybe this is just not the right approach, because the way to lllm's work is that it's a and like we have tech journalists left and right failing the mirror test and like not understanding that when you talk to chat GPT, or you talk to these AI girlfriends and boyfriends and a different avatar, you are.
Just talking to yourself in the mirror.
It is the digital version of talking to yourself in the mirror, which can be useful. It can be useful to talk to yourself in the mirror. There's a reason why people go like you're great, yes, awesome. Sometimes you need to like hear yourself think out loud, and that can be useful and helpful. But that's what you're doing. Like, you have to understand that you are talking to yourself. You are just having a conversation with yourself. And I think a lot of people don't get that. They don't
they think they're talking to a higher intelligence. Literally, know, you were just talking to yourself. If yourself could Google a little faster than you currently.
Yeah, that was That was the gist of Kashmir Hill's amazing New York Times piece about the people who really fell into a rabbit hole around these chat bots like chat GPT convinced them that they were in a matrix, like you know, alternate universe. And like one guy committed suicide.
Didn't he pull a knife on a cop or something?
Yeah, he like told the bot that he was going to kill himself to suicide by cop. And then his dad was like worried about his mental health, did call the cops and he was like, listen, I think my son's going to try to kill himself by attacking you. And guess what he did, because the chatbot was like.
And guess what. The cop just came right over with.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, you know, someone mental health, what do they need? Oh, they definitely want to die by a cop. Let's pull our guns.
I'm saying it's our society is not in a good spot right.
Our society is not prepared policing is prepared to arrest rather than help or service. So yeah, it's the natural. I think it's all of this is the natural comeopance of a society built with very little intention and suck because yes, because that's the thing is vibes and large language models are the ultimate like vibe slop. It's something built with no real and people love to say, well, Samulton's plan. No one has a single goddamn plan at all.
That's why there are no use cases because if anyone sat there and went what can we do with this? They go, fuck, I don't, I don't know, I don't. Is there anyone that we can pay one hundred million dollars too.
Well, you can do anything that you can imagine. That's why Auntie Jesse is saying the future is up to you.
Guys imagine solo.
I can imagine a lot. And it's but that's the thing, Like Alison, you had an excellent piece on this. It's like the whole job loss story is just them being like, please please up the shares up, shares, gun number go up. Please.
Yeah.
It's like I have to say this because everyone's paying attention to me. And it's like, I'm sure shareholders and vesters on Wall Street are saying, what is your AI strategy and how are you planning to mass lay off your staff so that you can cut corners and replace people with AI? And so you have someone like Andy Jazzy come out and say, you guys are all doing great work. We've built incredible products. Alexa everyone loves it. Spoilerler, No one loves Alexa. That's stupid.
Yeah.
And as a result of that, sometime in the near future, I won't say when, but sometime soon, a lot of you are going to be laid off or have your jobs changed by AI. And I'm shocked every time one of these CEOs does this, we report it out as if it's like, oh.
It's true.
God in Heaven just just said like this is what's going to happen, and that is what's going to happen. Like we had, you know, banner headlines saying like Amazon CEO says Ai is going to take your jobs, and it's like, well, he didn't really say how or when or by what mechanism, and there's no evidence of it happening yet, so what are we talking about.
It's I think that there is an alarming amount of journalism that's excited for it, or there's just a doomerism behind it.
I think you can replace the word Ai in a lot of these articles was just God and like this is something that like we talked about the first time we met in Vegas, right, is how all of these like the people who are int Ai talk about it as if it's just a cult, and we could like like like there's this divine aspect that has like ordain, like you have to lose your job because Ai is
taking God. God has mandated this. And like even even like with the you know, talking to an Ai like it's a person, they often gain this like divine aspect when when people are treating these chatbots like they are like scenting in beings, it's like the same way we
like project divinity onto aspects of nature. And I think that is like a big, a big part of it, because now you have God telling you that you're actually in the matrix and you and you need to do this thing, and for some reason, there's not safeguards put on this God program to protect you God's creation.
They're all programmed to be super friendly and to tell you that you're great. And it's like if you if you're actually like trying to use this thing and you're viewing it as you talking to you, like I have to tell chat JPT all the time you're putting too
much flattery in. You have to cap all of your flattery at one percent because I can't, I can't handle you, and I need you to like explain why everything you said has no bias or as little bias as possible, or to explain all of your bias in it so that I can read and evaluate and just go like, no, that's not it. And I've been told I'm insane for like programming all the AI I talk to you that way.
Sample output shit, it's making it's adjusting a program to
¶ AI as a Mirror: Talking to Yourself
do a thing for you.
It is because like if you just leave it at the default.
It's trying to whop your brain.
Like if you leave it at the.
Default, it's just like you've done nothing wrong, you are absolutely correct and everything you said, what a brilliant thing that you said.
And if you like listen to that enough times, it did well.
I mean, I think it's whooping your brain because there is no intention behind this. They train it whatever, but they could relatively ease put a thing saying just to be clear you are talking to you. This is They don't want to do that, and I think it might be want to be another of the goombas from open AI.
It breaks the illusion, right, like it's they need to. It's like the Wizard of Oz thing. Yes, but they should break the illusions. They have to, but they don't want.
They don't want to because it means they will get.
Less tension, economy the less. But it breaks the engagement. You're not going to engage with it if you're like, this is obviously a robot.
That's that's the part where I get actually emotional and angry about AI is when the CEOs of these companies talk about it. They talk about it as if it's inevitable and we have no agency. That's where the god thing comes in, where it's like, yes, this is happening, whether we keep doing it or not, and.
We are the ones who will fix it of course.
Yeah, it's like, oh yeah, I mean Sam Altman, I was just rereading, like.
Uh the Gentle Singularity that fucking blog.
Oh I hadn't read that one. No, I was talking about he created world coin. Oh God, because he's so convinced that.
Let me stop you there. Okay, No, I just want to stop you because you said he's so convinced. Your only source of information for that claim is Sam Wiltman. Sam Oltman did world coin so we could sell a cryptocurrency. That's the only reason. Yes, so we could collect a bunch of No, he's so convinced. He's convinced of nothing, I believe. Okay, this is literally and the pitch, the.
Pitch of world Coin, I like, I interviewed their ceo. I had a lovely conversation with him. Sorry, but you know the pitch is AI is going to become so ubiquitous and it's going to destroy all the jobs and flatten the economy, and we're going to have to have this ubi that's distributed by by this blockchain mechanism. And I'm sitting here and I'm going, yes, but we don't
have we are actually full agents in this world. Like we all need to step back and realize that we have of sovereignty over what we do in the technology we make and how we regulate it. And it's a real just like kind of uh abdication of responsibility for society where I'm just like, what what do we want to make for future generations? And that's all the like problem that comes out of Silicon Valley is like building a better future, and it's like you can't have both things.
Where are you building?
It's because like what they really are building is money machine go up, and like that's the main thing. It's like they say all this lip service about making everything better, Well you could gear cancer.
That would like legitimately make everything.
They will, Sure, so you could do that, but it's like their first and foremost.
I believe Joe Biden will cure cancer before Samulman. Both have claimed they will. I believe Joe Biden would. No, I mean neither of them will do it, which is my larger point. But I mean, you're both wrong because it's a click to quote Sam Altman. As data center production gets automated, the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity. People are often curious about how much energy chat GPT queries use. The average
query is zero point three four what hours? About what an oven would use a little over a second. Now, someone who's almost immediately thrown water on this entire thing. But this blog A Gentle Singularity by Sam Mortman was quoted like scripture by everyone, and that I think it. I'd love that you brought up divinity GEG, because it really is just like this pseudo religious it's religion, capitalism,
it's all. It's just we found a way to love a company like a god and also kind of abdicate any responsibility or thinking about it, because when you look
¶ The AI Cult and Divinity Aspect
at the people who love AI and the way they talk about it, it's not about what's happening today. It's no in it. They're like in the future when this happens.
No, it's always it's always this future privacy. And if if we believe in this god enough and if we build up this religion enough it can deliver us a infinite automated money machine.
But what's crazy is the money machine is bad. It doesn't make any money. It loses some. They spent three hundred and seventy twenty seven billion dollars in cattle expenditures this year are projected to and the revenue of this industry is like forty billion dollars.
That's because money is fake until you have none.
That's the only time real the thing.
Money will run out. Money go down, money go down. That work good. And the story that's really been twisting me up this week was telling you about Early and I swear it won't be this boring is open Ai is Microsoft's biggest customer ten billion dollars in projected revenue this year for Azure, and a zero revenue has been kind of like not growing so good. So we just have one of the largest tech companies in the world
that is just handing itself cash. And as part of the deal when they funded them in twenty twenty three, they funded them principally in cloud compute credits. So ten billion dollars of microsoft reddit of revenue is going to be partially in air miles and everyone just sitting around being like this is great. On top of that, ten billion dollars a revenue from open ai, so thirteen billion total from Microsoft. Then open ai projected to make twelve
point seven billion dollars. Half of the revenue in this fucking industry is open ai or the slop, the cost slop of open Ai.
It's okay, yed, we can we can just keep blowing up the balloon. It's never gonna pop. You can keep blowing it up.
It's just crazy.
We found the infinite balloon. It's this crazy material that's indestructible. You can keep blowing more in and it's gonna be fine.
It's just it's so funny as it kind of is gonna be fine.
It's so good.
I just feel like AI is just like the imbecile magnet. It's just this idea that people who don't really know stuff but have got to positions of power can go Yes, finally a thing that will make up the reason I have to buy it for me.
I see this in journalism all the time. I'm getting like conversations about well AI could replace entry level journalism jobs. I think that's like a real concern if you're like just a I started as a copy editor with zero responsibilities, is other than like finding typos and misspellings and occasionally getting to write a headline and being like, oh, thank
you for letting me write a headline. And I could see a large language model filling that in, in which case I don't get a jumping off point to do what I want to do.
I mean, they've been off showing those jobs as well. It's just another off showing.
My point is I've been in this for like twenty years and it was happening. Then it might happen at a more accelerated timeframe with AI. But I'm skeptical you're
¶ Sam Altman, WorldCoin, and UBI
still going to need as we saw with that Chicago Uhhago summer book list, you know, like in case anyone missed it, you know, you got the authors right and then just made up complete horseshit for the books that they didn't write and were about whatever AI made hallucinated they were about. You know, an entry level copy editor would have caught that. But we've all already fired those people.
We've already laid off the entry copy editors. So you know, all of these things, these ways that like technology is going to create job losses. That's that's standard in our age. AI is going to create some job losses. Yes, is it going to be the what was it white color blood bath? I don't think so.
On to twenty percent unemployment according to Warrio Ami Day and it's that's a CEO of Anthropic and his name is Wario. Everyone makes the type on type Staria. I'm not sure why it's in books and literature, so let's start correcting the record. It fucking pisses me off as well, because there I mentioned it earlier. There's almost like a
excitement in journalism for job loss in AI. Maybe it's due rism, maybe they're just like, oh, I'll get ahead of this, but it feels almost like they want it to happen and they want it so that it proves AI is the big point is religious to get fucking Chrystal.
It always it always comes back to that.
Yeah, is that we've been talking about this for two years like like this this like cultish nexus around around AI. I mean this is this goes like the like the early super intelligence hype of like the twenty teens.
Right, It's it's it's all God of this idea.
Wait, there was a hype cycle on that. How'd I fucking forget that one?
There was well, like like the rockospasiless thing, right, Oh god, it's it's the very like the earliestages of this.
Yeah, like viewing AI like this inevitable God.
I have you heard of Eliza Yudowski? Sounds familiar, but is the I keep having this person brought up to me by serious people. He is a person that writes about a g I and writes scary. He wrote like a fan fic, Harry Potter fan fiction, with ag yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want to be clear. If anyone else brings him up to me, I'm gonna email back just some sort of obscenity, because you should not take this man seriously,
he writes Harry Potter fan fiction. He has just ingratiated himself with other cultists from Less Wrong, and I see real journalists mentioning them, and it's almost like people just want to find any possible proof they're right so that they can ignore the signs that everyone's wrong. And I also think that regular people see the problems of AI way more than the journalists though, And it's strange, it's bizarre.
It's like another thing I forget who said this. If you're the person that said this to me, I'm very sorry for forgetting. But it's like everyone feels bad that they missed out on social media and calling social media is the best biggest movement, or they feel bad on missing out in GPUs and not saying GPUs have pushed
¶ AI Industry's Financial Unsustainability
the next thing. And by the way, there are people who tried in like twenty seventeen to say GPUs would be the next computing thing. They were ignored. It was crazy how early they were.
But it's and journalists in particular were late to the Internet. Yes, so we're there's probably an institutional bias toward taking tech seriously because we are paying for brushing off the Internet in two thousand.
I think I'm going to start in a war show called the fel for It Awards. That's a good idea, and I'm gonna when because it's like you say that and they were late. They weren't late to the metaverse. How'd that go? They were late to crypto but NFTs, that's.
Says crypto sucks And it's hard to talk, like it's hard to explain.
Yeah, having to explain the blockchain.
No, it's it's the problem with crypto is it's complex. But you can explain it quite simply as a decentralized database. But when you explain it like that, it sounds fucking boring because it is. Yes, it's connected to money. Sometimes. I wrote about crypto for years, and every time I think about writing it again, I feel sad. But it come do my job, sure, sure, absolutely, give me a CNN column. Michael Balabano kicked my ass up, but it's there.
He's a wonderful merite. It's just so frustrating as well, because as ever, and I'm kind of paraphrasing The Big Show, it's like the people who get fucked here are regular people AI bubble bursts. It's not like Sa sam Oltman will be humiliated. I will make sure of it. But it's not like Warrio or Sammy Clammy. Sammy Clammy. Sammy is going to get done in. At the end of this,
¶ AI as an Imbecile Magnet
it's gonna be the stocks are going to crash to fuck. People's pensions will be fucked. I mean, thirty five percent of the American stock market is magnificent seven nineteen percent of that it's in video. I think forty two percent of Nvidia's revenue is magnificent seven stocks. I will have a citation in this, notes Laura Bratton at Yahoo Finance
¶ AI and Job Loss Reporting
the goat. But it's going to hit everyone, but it's not going to I don't think it'd be great financial crisis level, but it's going to be really bad. And I don't think these AI companies are going to be offering the free spigot anymore. It costs them so much money. So we're going to see all of this get like it will still be there, but like this festering hole the side of in the side of the tech industry as everyone goes, what the fuck's next?
Do you have such a beautiful way with where it's in?
Yes, kind of the way.
The metaverse still exists within ye book, but like it's not the star Child okay anymore.
I was talking talking to me lad later last night about this, and it was driving me insane. Isn't it fucking insane? Meta A multi trillion market cap company just went, don't worry, legs are coming in the metaverse and then just went, actually they're not.
Actually we're pitty.
A huge company just lied. They lied constantly for like over a year you had people being like, absolutely believe you one hundred percent, and then everyone just went, Oh, isn't that fucking straight? What the fuck is going It's it's weirder than the AI thing, though the AI thing is pretty weird. It's like we live tech journalism sometimes lives in an alternate reality. Oh yeah, it's so. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with a lot of things, but in particular, it just feels like
it would be more fun if we were honest. It would be so much more fun. I wrote a thing today since coming out in a few days. So the thing they'reright on Monday is just make fun of them because they're not charming. They're not interesting, they're not hot, none of them are tasty looking.
I think sen Altman has had some work done recently. Do you think he as his lips are looking a little fuller.
Than Juicy Sam? Juicy Samultman. All right, that's a new that's a new phrase to me to text eight people. But it's it's like, they're not charming, they're not interesting. Seve Job's complete monster, but at least interesting to listen to. They're boring, they're all management consultants. They don't. I went and reread the iPhone announcement today, and the beginning is him just being like, yeah, we did this, we did this, and then we came up with the thing that did
all of this, and I'm about to show you. Yeah, I get why people cheered that. But now it's like.
I tried watching the Liquid Glas presentation. I fell asleep in like five to seven minutes there, damn. And like, I think there's parts of liquid Glass that seemed compelling. I hopefully it'll get worked out before it has the full launch, but like it's presented in the most non compelling way possible.
It's glass based on vision os from the most successful the most.
Successful Apple product.
You remember the vision pro No, me neither. But that's the thing as well. I'm trying to get us excited for liquid ass. And it's very confusing as well, because you could just describe it in a boring mind said, yeah, just be very matter of fact about it. But I guess it's for shareholders, but is it even No, even the most slimy Apple people were kind.
Of like they needed a literal shiny thing to distract from the how.
About they fixed tapping in screenshots. My screenshots do not crop properly. You work for Apple and you know why, email me, but it's oh, I don't know. Make up devices work good. They're all a mess everything.
Like if you think about the iPhone, it's seventeen years old. It's ready to go to college. Carry people who are twenty one, who can vote and go to war and do all those things, most likely have no memory of a life before the smartphone. Right, Like, we're at a point where people want what's next, and so I think you just have like tech journalism, we have to chase clicks and seo farm bait, we have to chase all of the to stay alive. And so it's very much like.
This is the next thing.
Get height because if you all care, it's like we're looking for the next Game of Thrones, but for tech. Because Game of Thrones was such a huge traffic magnet that literally anything that happened like wrah, we're all drinking at the tit of like seo traffic and ad moneys
are coming in. So I just think there is like an incentive and like you know, journalists always get pushed in any doesn't matter who you write for, you always get pushed to like do the next big thing, find the next big trend, and.
If you're a bit way journalist, you have to think about what's the next election, Who's going to be the next thing?
You know, It's like what's the what's the take?
And I think that the reason no one wants to write that is the there's nothing left.
I don't mean that's a scary thought, right, It's like what if this is?
It?
Like like we're trying to come up with what's the thing that will be the new thing after the smartphone? And like it's like a like ar contacts, like come on every red in a minute, Like it's it's until we start getting the chips implanted, Like and I.
Thought Joni I was hired to fix this, to figure out what the what that's the phone?
That's not a phone. We've come up with a new kind of phone.
It's I mean, I just think we're at a point where like the tech is stalled out, right, because if you have like the law of diminishing returns and just.
Wrote com bubble our episode lost you is though it's we're at the are we at the I'm not gonna say end of history because people misquote for Kuyama. But it's we're at the end actually, anyway, I'll get back to Laa. It's we're at the end of innovation for a minute, because if you look at how they're trying to innovate right now. First of all, I know I've been making fun of the overpaying people, but the overpaying thing they're doing is only something you do if you have no fucking clues.
They don't know what to do.
Yea. Yeah, they're just throwing around money. They're investing three hundred and twenty seven billion dollars this year into something they don't They built massive data centers. I don't think
¶ The Pseudo-Religious Hype Cycle
that any of I think they all kind of have realized there might not be you next thing, and I think that their obsession has become something different, which is line go up, money, go up. But how can I charge you ten dollars a month? How can I charge you and a thousand people at your organization thirty dollars a month? To the point that they don't know how to do math anymore, And they're like, well, I got you to pay thirty dollars. It cost me seventy five
to get that money from you. But I don't know how to fix that, But what if I spent more money to find out? Maybe I don't know and they don't know how. And they will say this if you ask questions, which people tend not to with these people.
And it's just even you've got analysts doing And so there was an analyst earlier who's like, oh, yeah, Google's are they're making three point one billion dollars in Google one subscriptions because of AI and it's not they just like Google one subscriptions have gone up, and they're like, fuck, I think it's AI.
I mean this is this is why everyone's focused on it on AIS because it's like it's like the final boss of our like collective tech like unconsciousness. Right, It's the thing Victoria you were talking about earlier. It's like like in like you know, like eighties sci fi. This is always like the final thing. Yeah, after we've gotten like you know, augmented reality, you got the contacts, got the glasses, like AIS, that's like the last thing that's the last like ghost of our of our past that
we're still trying to chase. That's this thing that's still trying to like control us, like time traveling, like backwards in time, this idea that eventually we will we will have this AI thing and like it is, Yeah, it is. It is like the final boss and we're always trying to chase it and we're coming up with like the barrier of like maybe this thing isn't actually ever gonna be real.
And I think they think it's the magical thing because it will tell them how to run their business.
Because it'll it'll tell them what's actually the only this
¶ Tech Journalism and Missing Trends
is as far as we can get, and then we have to create something smarter than us so it can tell us what the next thing will be, because this is the final thing we can imagine and it's like this is like it.
But even when you listen to Clammy Sammy talking about it, and he'll say he will be like you see Sami, you Sie sam Oldman. Clammy Sammy's thing he always says is I can't wait to see what you'll build with this, and it's like, motherfucker, that is your job. And that's actually the thing with AI as well. I'm always being to But the few haters who dare ender my dojo is they say, oh, well you don't know how to
use it, right, You're not doing it correctly. I think even Alison you might have mentioned this like holding it wrong thing. But it's like, no, I am the customer. I am I am paying you for work. I shouldn't have to write a nine hundred and fifty word prompt that tells you to imagine you're a spaceman or whatever, like whatever makes it work. Fuck you, fuck you man, I'm me pay you money.
You give me thing, nine hundred word prompt to generate a nine hundred word story.
Yeah, that sucks.
They're like straight upset. There's just like bereft of. And
¶ AI Bubble's Impact on Public
it's also we've handed over society to people that don't create things. We've had people who are just like showing different faces to enough people that they get where they need to go. The business idiot writ large and it's just it's so funny as well because it's going to fall apart, and when it does, everyone I genuinely, I mean I look forward to it because of the obvious
yucks and chuckles. I will get out of it, but there's going to be a really interesting period of journalism having to see it and go why did we fall for this? And if there isn't, I will make this happen with all of my energy. I will hold everyone because it's I think, and I'm not insulting. You're out there. No, no, no, no, this is not an insult. I promise. Read the comments on AI stories on the Verge.
I do read that.
I love reading because you see, regular people are so skeptical of this shit.
Oh no, I read. I read love the comments on all the stories that I write, which are just like, thank you for calling out how stupid it is.
Well, that's the thing, though the regular people seem to get it.
There's gonna be well, it depends. Like there's I think there's a sector of counter culture that's developing like a neo Loodite perspective like beyond just like like you know, like like anti tech, like Green anarchists, which have carried the bloodite torch for the past like thirty years. We're starting to see like like the quote unquote the cool kids adopting this like neo Loodite tendency mostly in response
to like you know, like like alienation and like automation. Right, And I think that's trend is going to like continue, Like that's gonna it's gonna be like almost like a social status, like status like a signifier, is the fact that you're not reliant on on these things, because there will be a version of the I that does keep getting like Normy Afied, I think it's gonna it's there's gonna be very like even if you look at the way higher education is working right now, like the level
of people who are graduating just on the basis of like AI helping them with large parts of their assignments, like I have, I have a few friends who are professors, and the majority of assignments that are turned in are majority written by AI. And we get to this point, we're gonna have like a we're gonna have a new generation of the workforce that doesn't really know how to do anything because AI has been doing everything for them.
But they got their degree, you know, like I am employable certificate, but now that now they don't really know what to do.
So'sification.
There's gonna be but there's gonna be a counterculture that is like that like refuses to use that. Right, that's like I will not be using AI. That's gonna be a thing you have to you have to like prove and like talk about and it's it's it's gonna be a version of a social like.
Wild like status card.
Have you heard of clearly?
Yeah, it's the cheat on everything app. And so it was invented by this uh Columbia kid drop It, who I interviewed him for.
Oh I heard about this guy.
Okay, so it's the cheat on everything app. I tested it. It helped me cheat on nothing.
It was terrible.
I cannot wait all dates go flawless. Now that I read from a teleprompter.
I can't even do that. Like in its current state, it's like you use it, it's like a prompt machine for when you are on a video call, and it very slowly can answer prompts based on a transcript of your video. It's it's not that usable. It messed up the mics on my computer from testing it to this point where like I deleted it from my computer and video uh software programs like Google Meet and Zoom will pick a non existent cluly mic And I'm just like, I don't love.
That's concerning it.
But you know, cool, yeah, but you know, like as soon as I wrote that story up, someone another company messaged me is like, we're using AI to catch the AI cheaters, and I was.
Like, Okay, finally we have bare Force from the Simpsons solving this problem we created.
That's the perfect use case for AI.
Though, using AI to fix all the problems cast by AI, that's the real.
I think it's beautiful.
I think that's the actual singularity.
We've created problems to create solutions for neither of them work. But clearly the one of the people from Andresen went on a podcast is like, yeah, you know, it's when marketing and virality overtake making a perfect Artesian product. It's like, what you mean is when something goes viral for fucking lying lying, like it was a lie. Like when you say something that is not true intentionally, that's called lying.
It's called an i RL hallution.
Yes, it's weird because the way that app was born, and initially it was like some other app that was used to kind of make a point about how stupid technical interviews are for devs, right, and I was like, that's actually kind of radical, and like it is proving a point and you have lost the point and now you have five million dollars in some somebody is going into one hundred thousand dollars commercials and nice apartment.
Did you hear about Mira Marathi though, the former CTO of Open Ai and her new startup, Intelligent Machines. No one is so they raised I think like a billion dollars, I want to say, and they did not share anything about the financials. They also did not share anything about the product, so anyone investing just went into room mirror. Maarati went yes, so I need money, mean money now, and they went fuck yeah. Absolutely. There were reports where people would do the vcs were just like, can you
share anything? You said no. On top of this, and by the way, I admire the scam at this point, I just get it. She has her voting rights supersede everyone. Get it now. I fuck these pigs who cannot even bother to even think about what they're building or what it is they do. They just like, I will take an I will give you an unlimited amount of money because of the vibes I have, because of the I would love to know. I definitely had a moment where I'm like.
Could I vibes give me money, give me one hundred million money, and I will vague vaguely promise to mark something in the future at a time I will.
I will never do anything, I will guarantee you that. I mean, Ilia Suits gave it the other open aye guy misreported by Pivot to AI that generally does good work but needs to work on their fucking headlines, suggesting that they guaranteed they would not do anything into a superintelligence, when the actual headline was that they said they have nothing and they want to build superintelligence, which is way funnier.
I honestly at this point like it's evil to lie and extract capital, but the people you're extracting it from your wallet inspecting them. But also you could fix almost you could fix like world hunger, I think for six billion dollars. They worked at it.
Yeah, yeah, you could and challenge Gilan Musk and he said, if you figure out the number, I'll give it to you. And then they figured out the number.
The numbers not based. It's very upsetting. I saw an out there as well say today that Grock only makes a hundred million dollars in revenue. It's so fucking cool as well, they'll burn money.
I I mean, just give it to me, give it to me, or so to me. Give sponsor a journalist. We too can sponsor a journalist to live a life.
And the funny thing is is, like, I actually think you could make a shit ton of profitable journalism just by like talking about this bluntly. I'm doing it all the time. But it's it's weird, and I actually it's kind of wrap us up as well. I have to wonder if at the end of this farce whether there will be a rise of critical tech journalists. I'm not holding my hopes out, but I think that there is a slog Like you two, actually, Victoria Allison, You've both inspired me a bit that it's possible.
It's just right, that's true.
I try it, and I tell you what happened.
When I tried it.
That's it.
Imagine my job.
Imagine that. Imagine if that happened on Hardfalk. Sorry but I'm saying nothing. No, I know, I know, I know. I'm not going to let these are my opinions just mine. I think about them all the time. It's I'm hoping this happens because I think you've got Brian Merchant, You've got Edwinald grayce So Junior, and Molly White, of course, one of the fucking best in the business. Molly's great Molly is You've got really good criticism, and I think
people are hungry for it. The reason I brought up the Virgin's comments is this isn't like any kind of fun making. It's you see people saying it now, just being like, hey, why the fuck am I having to pretend here? And I just I think it's the business idiot idea I had a few months ago where it's like, hey, maybe we've handed over our eccon and me are finances, the editorial structure of some publications and the people with the biggest microphones to people that don't understand a single
goddamn thing. And it's kind of that scares me more than anything, because we talk about the harms of generative AI and it's yeah, there is no intention. No intention is far scarier than people being like they want all of your data and all this when they have no idea. I was actually kind of disappointed. Meredith's Meredith Wird toa
care of signal. She's really good Admira her daily. She said a thing on stage about how like, yeah, AI agents, which is the marketing term, but they're going to do this, and they're going to do this. Whenever anyone speaks about AI agents just imagine like clown noises, circus music if
¶ Critique of Non-Creative Leadership
it helps. Because AI agents do not exist, they do not work. There are people who are getting close to a thing that might work. One time, they had a big study out of salesforce. So like after with multi step processes, you know, things that require you to do more than one thing. Yeah, it failed like less more than I think it's like more than thirty two percent of the time. It's like, sorry, I only succeeded thirty two percent of the time, which is very bad and
not getting better. And it's like, this is what everyone's talking about AI agents despite they're not working. I realized the sentence started at one point and it's going to end it that I feel like I'm going fucking insane every time I read the news and they see a new thing that does not exist and everyone says it exists. Am I crazy? Am I having a problem? Like it's I mean, yes, but is that why I'm reading the
stuff that doesn't exist? It's just driving me insane. But now you've said the divinity thing, I'm just like, this isn't actually about building stuff. This is a belief system and plate spinning. This is just an intention to build a vibeespased economy, except it can't last long term, oh God.
Or until the next the next revolution that replaces the AI god. You know, if like industrial revolution and modernity killed God, quak God, then maybe AI is the is
¶ Neo-Luddism and AI Counterculture
the demigod that we that we replace God with, and then something else will happen.
Sam Altman is the Antichrist.
Many many people are saying that.
Many people, many.
People in a New York City podcasting studio are saying, did.
I do that?
It's sorry, it's but even then, the reason I say is the Antichrist is not any recent interviews on the New York Times podcast. It's specifically about the fact that he is able to charm every business idiot. He's so good at it. He's good at saying nothing in a way that makes people give him a billion dollars. And
¶ AI in Education and Cheating
he is wrapped. I think he's wrapped everyone up in this insanity, and no one really knows why they're doing it. You've got journalists, you've got investors, you've got consumers even who are like chasing this dream. And I genuinely think he may lead the tech industry to a kind of ruin. I don't think all the companies are going to shut down. But this is the ultimate hubris of basing everything in tech on venture capital invested by people don't really understand,
and public companies run by people with nbas. Every single Mark Zuckerberg's rarity. He doesn't have an MBA, but all the rest of them do. Even the guy who replaced Andy Jesse Aws the cloud part of Amazon has an NBA. Nbas are everywhere. I think we should bar them from running companies and also being allowed to just don't give houses or healthcare. No, sorry, I'll stop that one there,
¶ Cluey: The AI Cheat App
But it's just I don't know. We're all going to suffer for this. I will I'll blog about it, I guess, and we'll all blog, we'll do podcasts, gere, but you know what, I'm gonna wrap it on that happy note there, get Where can people find you?
Well? I help run a daily Yike's news show, four calls, and media called it could happen here. That's who you can find most of my work. Right now, I'm finishing my final piece on the stop cup City movement in Atlanta, as well as an upcoming piece on liberal accelerationism.
So what is that?
You know?
That's the pieces about.
Well, we'll have to find out and listen to it. Alison, Where can people find you?
I read a business newsletter for CNN called Nightcap. You can just google CNN Business Nightcap and I'm on Blue Sky and Victoria.
You can find me at the Verge and all my handles on everything Blue Sky, Twitter, Instagram, all the things is at vicmsong.
You can find me inside your computer. That's where I live. I'm d Zetron. You've been listening to Better Offline. Thank you, of course to our wonderful producer Daniel Goodman. You've been hearing us recorded out of the beautiful New York City, Nevada. And yeah, you keep listening to my goddamn show. We'll have a monologue this week as well. Be sou thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer
of the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com.
M A. T.
T OsO w Ski. You can email me at easy
¶ VCs Investing in Nothing
at Better Offline dot com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's youread dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
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