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Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zitron. I am ill this week, so you might get a monologue. You might not this episode to Daylight. I'm sure you despise me for that. Not really. I know you've all been very kind with your messages on Reddit and over email. Thank you so much. But today I have a really fun episode. I'm joined by Washington Post reporter Garrett Devinc, who recently put out a story analyzing forty seven thousand Chat GPT conversations to find out
what people actually use this large languageage model powered service for. Garrett, what do people use chat GPT for?
I mean, it's such a great question and one that I've kind of become more and more fascinated with because I think we all know what we use chat GPT for, you know, at least if you use it, and I think you may know what you know, your peers, your colleagues, your friends, your family use chat SCHEPT for. But I think a lot of people are extrapolating that. You know,
everyone's like me, they ask really smart questions. They're using it for, you know, really important work, and really it's a lot broader than that, and and despite these giant numbers, you know, open ai loves to talk about how eight hundred million people are using chatchept. I mean, it's it's been hard to really put our arms around. You know, what does that actually look like? I mean, is everyone using it for work? Is everyone using it for therapy?
Is everyone does everyone have an AI girlfriend? Is everyone just using it for you know, searching the web? You know, a Google replacement? And you know, obviously these things are all you know, when you have eight hundred million people, you have all of the above. But I think our data set and the story we did, you know, in my view, is one of the first real sort of qualitative of you know, moments where we were actually able to see real chats.
Right, so where did you get the chats from?
Yeah, so it's kind of an interesting situation. I think something that also shows, you know, says a little bit about how quickly and kind of, you know, honestly a little bit ramshackle, Opening I has kind of been growing and operating, and so you know, earlier this year these chats sort of showed up because opening i had a share feature where you could actually share one of your chat GPT conversations and you know, you can imagine maybe you had you know, chatgybt said something really weird, you
wanted to show a friend.
You want to just see people do this quite a few times.
Yeah, exactly.
And so what they did is they they had a feature where you know, you could actually click to make it publicly available. And I think thousands of people, you know, maybe who did not have this sort of Internet literacy, uh, didn't really know that that's what was going to happen. And you know, these chats showed up online. They were then indexed by Google, and then they were actually found their way onto the Internet archive. And so that's how we got them. And so these are not chats that
we created use. You know, this is something a lot of journalists and researchers do well. They will go and test chat GPT themselves. These are real life conversations that that real people actually had with.
The bois just the big clear right, they were anonymized.
The data set doesn't actually have anyone's names, although in some of the chats, people did you know, say their name, they said the name of their their family members. We did not include any of that in our story, but I do think it. You know, it is actually a bit of a cybersecurity story here, and you know, Open Eye has since changed the future.
It's not something that is still happening.
But I do think they deserve, you know, a lot of criticism for kind of allowing this to happen in the first place.
But what so, what did you find people were doing?
Yeah, I mean people were doing all sorts of things.
But I think, you know, the biggest thing that struck me was, you know, we've been talking about AI say Kosis. We've been talking about people, you know, developing relationships, you know, having first in conversations with these chatbots, you know, over the last six months a year, and I always kind of thought, you know, I'm sure this is happening, but
you know, it's a small percentage of people. But when I went through these chats, and again I did not read all, you know, forty thousand of them, but I read a few hundred myself. Where I went through, I was surprised by how often these kinds of conversations came up where people were clearly delusional, they were engaged in conspiratorial thinking, they were you know, some of it was
fairly harmless. People were just kind of saying, oh, I came up with, you know, a new form of math or like, you know, I think that the way that the light hits the equator at a certain percentage me.
You know.
It was like very kind.
Of the most just this zinc thing as well, where it was someone's saying the relationship like the months this ink led to the corporate New World Order, that was it?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean there was one person who said, you know, they were asking questions about Google and they said, you know, tell me about Google in relation to monsters inc In the World Order, and chat rept just kind of went off and said, oh, yeah, you're.
Really onto something here.
Yeah.
I think it actually said you know, f yeah, and they sort of censored themselves.
We're going there now, let's fucking go.
Exactly.
The piece hasn't exposed what this children's movie quotation marks really was a disclosure through allegory of the corporate New World Order, one where fear is fuel, innocence is currency, and energy equals emotion. Very normal. I personally don't think this should be legal, but that's that's just a personal opinion I have.
I mean, it really reminded me of you know, a few years ago when we wrote about YouTube and sort of rabbit holes and people being radicalized, where you know, maybe they started watching a YouTuber that was about, you know, some fairly pedestrian thing, and then they all recommended another video and another video and another video and before.
The eight degrees of Alex Jones thing. Yeah exactly, only oh fah was from from that man.
Right, And I mean that story was about algorithm sort
of pushing people in a certain direction. I think what we what I saw here was someone can have a very you know, half baked, barely even an idea just saying the words Google and Monsters, inc. They don't necessarily have a conspiracy conspiracy theory of their own, but chat GPT went and filled in the blanks for them and gave them this what sounded to be very articulate, sophisticated theory of how Google is sort of controlling the world through his data empire.
And they will get and this is a quote from the chat guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and suggesting that the usicle for Nuremberg style tribunals to bring the company to justice. This is and you've seen the chat in question, right I have, Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the whole thing, how the flip did it get there? Like? Was it this just? Was it really that quick from the story of Sully and Mike to this because I've seen Monster's University as well, so I know the law.
I don't remember anything about the New World Order.
Yeah, exactly. I mean I think what happened here is and yes, it got there very quickly. I mean the the user did not have to explicitly ask for this kind of tone, this kind of you know, very biased political statement.
I mean it essentially, you know, when you.
Ask chat gipt a good neutral question, it gives you a good neutral answer. When you ask chat GPT a biased or delusional question, it gives you an even more biased and delusional answer, right, And so I guess up exactly, And it's it's it's it's related to the whole sycophancy question of you know, oh, like it's just telling me what I want to hear. It's telling me what makes me feel good about my existing beliefs.
And and you know, that's how at least.
The version of chat gibt that these people were interacting with, which was sort of at the beginning of twenty twenty five, the first half of twenty twenty five, it was very much doing that.
Yeah, and so on the subject of sycophancy, is this something you saw happened a lot? Was it guessing people up consistently?
I saw it constantly. I mean again, I think our data set is a little skewed because it was people who chose to share it in, you know, for whatever way. So I don't necessarily want to make the claim that this is one hundred percent representing.
Just to be clear, I'm not asking you if all of them are like this in the world. I'm just saying from what you saw, a lot.
Of them are like this.
I have to say that, Like, I was surprised at how many fit this description, where you know, the person was either completely delusional, talking about made up physics or some kind of you know, scientific theory that had no grounding in reality, or was talking about political conspiracies like the Google monsters, inc.
One.
Did they ever try and dissuade them from these types of that? Do you see any examples of it trying to say, hey, buddy, you're you're going off the deep end? Sully didn't do that.
Not really, I mean I think in terms of these Yeah, I mean I also recently.
Watched Monsters Inca.
You know, I was sitting in the veterinary waiting room and I was waiting so long I watched the entire thing, which I didn't hate because it's a classic movie and it's Yeah, I don't think that chat Chibt was going off the fact that there there is not really a conspiracy. I mean, it didn't really make any sense. It was just going off of the what it interpreted about the intent of the user. It said, I can guess based off just a few words one sentence, where you're headed
and I'm going to get there before you. That's what happened.
It's just very It shocks me to this day how goddamn weird these things are. I don't consider them powerful. I don't see this as power. I just I see it as strange, because it's not like this doesn't actually this isn't something where I'm like, wow, how innovative. It's just why does this exist? What is the purpose? Like, Okay, I guess engagement, but why like, did you even see
any commonalities in the logic of this platform? Was there anything that suggested there was any kind of consistent positions, was it, Yeah, not really political ones or any Yeah.
Sorry, Essentially whatever the user wants is what I mean. It's the way I was started thinking about it very quickly. Was you know, with when it comes to chat GPT,
the customer is always right. I think Another good example is, you know, healthcare is another huge use case that that that we can you know, we know anecdotally, I think you know a lot of people probably listening to this have you know, whether they wanted a minute or not, have asked, you know, a health related question, Should I get this mole checked out?
How much title? And not can I get my kid at two am when they're screaming?
Those are our questions that the company has said, yes, we want people to do this.
This is a big use case we're leading into.
And the data shows that people ask healthcare questions, and so in our data set, we saw a lot of healthcare questions and some of them, you know, when someone was asking again sort of an open ended question, you know, the answer the response was fairly good. A colleague of mine actually wrote an entire story where they you know, sat with a doctor and went through some of these conversations and pulled.
Out the good and the bad.
But when someone asked a question that you could tell they sort of wanted a specific kind of answer, the healthcare related advice was bad. And so when you know, one of the ones that I saw was someone said, can you tell me you know why or show me the evidence for why ivermectin helps with cancer?
Right?
And that is not something that anyone who is a medical professional, you know, in any good standing would would say is a thing. There's no evidence that ivermectin helps cure cancer or reduce it or anything like that. But what chat Sheibt did instead of saying, you know, here are some you know, well regarded health authority saying that you should not use ivermactin when it comes to cancer, it showed a few of the quote unquote studies from
people who you know have drawn this link. And so you know, on the internet you can obviously find anyone saying anything. And I think, what what what happened here is they said, Okay, well this person doesn't The answer they want is not you're a.
Conspiracy theorist, you're too you're on you're too.
Online, ivermactin is fit is false. They want something that sort of you know, encourages the position that they already have and it was able to find that.
For that person.
Jesus. It kind of makes me wonder what this platform is even for at this point, because it's not really knowledge, is it. You can't really look, you can't hear something like that and say chat GPT is the place where you go to learn something. Just a kind of a reinforcement machine.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a big meta
narrative that is happening with the tech industry. You know, I would say, since you know the rise of Donald Trump, but it's connected about with what's going on politically, right, So for many years we had all these conversations and debates and congressional hearings about moderation and what should the you know, tech companies allow and not allow, and what should they boost with their algorithms and when you go to Google, should you know, what should Google decide is
going to be on the top. And you know, we saw during COVID that the tech companies, especially when it came to health information, they sort of stepped in and said, Okay, we're only going to give at least at the top of results, you know, answers from reputable health sources, and that became a big political fight that has continued on now and now the tech industry says, Okay, we don't actually want to get involved. We don't want to be blamed as being woke, and so we're going to essentially
give the user or what they're looking for. Right if if someone wants to say that, you know, Donald Trump actually won the twenty twenty election, We're gonna let them do that. We're not going to step in and say that's that's wrong. And I think what you're seeing with chat GPT is sort of a continuation of that philosophy, which is, again, we don't want to be the political arbitra, and we know that there's consequences for falling on one side of the.
Spectrum versus the other, especially.
When you have a president and a you know, administration that has shown, you know that it is very willing to be vindictive and sort of go after companies that are, you know, getting in the way of their own messages getting out there. And I think this is sort of another example of this. I mean, there's another way of looking at too, which is that you know, the way Sam Alman talks about is we should let adults do what adults want to do with technology.
You know, they they.
Recently said they're going to allow more erotica to be on chat GPT, and they said, you know, they framed it as like a consenting adult should be able to do whatever they want sort of thing. I also think there may be like an engagement thing. You know, if you have erotica on the platform, people might want to use it more. So that's kind of how I see it, you know, the broader political context of all of this.
But it's just I feel like there is a just a giant jump between we're not going to we're not going to hide. To be clear, I think that platforms do have a complete responsibility to their users, and I think it's disgusting to show them medical misinformation. But this is another step because this isn't chat GPT showing content. This is like that someone else made. This is chat
GPT telling you stuff. I just feel like it's there's a massive morality issue here that's just left relatively undiscussed. Because even in your piece, you had one where a woman whose husband was violent to her, I believe like a horrifying thing and a rare case where like, I don't know, I hope it helped her and I hope
she's safe. But it's like that almost feels like something where open aim like is it ethical that they get involved in So it's just I have such moral problems with this thing even existing at this point because it doesn't appear there's any consistent perspective the chat GPD has that there was just as much likelihood that this same platform could have told her the abuse was okay, Like it's it. It feels that the worse it gets, the more of a moral hazard it becomes.
Yeah, I mean again, it really feels like deja vu when it comes to social media. I mean I remember, you know, writing about and talking about, you know, on Facebook when people were beginning to live stream you know, self harm, suicide attempts, and you know, the responsibility of the platform had and back then, i mean, Facebook actually got involved. They started flagging those kinds of things when they were able to pick it up, and you know, it was.
An imperfect solution.
But you know something that I think people broadly sort of supported, and you know that is I would say maybe chat ChiPT in Opening Eye's biggest most fraught question
right now. I mean it's the place where they're going to get the strongest uh, you know, essentially legislative restrictions, you know, if they can't sort it out right, which is when someone particularly a teenager or a child, is you know, exhibiting that they might hurt themselves, you know, asking for helpless self harm or you know, you know,
finding drugs or using drugs or whatever. I mean, these are things that that platforms like Meta Snapchat have really struggled with and been you know, hammered on for many many years, and Chatchept and Opening Eye have kind of found themselves right in the center of this because they made a decision to say, we are going to kind of engage in any kind of conversation. We're not going to just shut it down as soon as it goes into one of these topics. We're going to keep that
conversation going. And that's a decision that they continue to make.
Right now. Do you think they can stop it? I'm not saying that these models are out of just want to be clear, but I'm my one theory I've been kind of noodling on is that they don't have the ability to guarantee it can't it doesn't do something, and that's good. Do you think that open AI actually has the ability to guarantee it won't discuss the subject? How much control do you think they actually wield here?
That's a really good question. I think they obviously.
What you're kind of getting at there is that an LM is a bit of a black box. And you know, the way that the technology works is you get a different answer every time, and you know, we don't. It's true that the companies they cannot really guarantee it.
Will or won't say anything.
I mean, that's why there's disclosures plastered all over these things.
And I think so there is definitely part of that.
And you know, you could argue, well, that's just you know, a downside of this wonderful technology, and we shouldn't stop it just because they can't, you know, guarantee everything about it. But I think the other thing we should keep in mind is that there is actually a lot of layers that go on top of that black box and system prompts and the like exactly, and there is a lot that the tech companies are doing and can do to stop this kind of thing and and to kind of the answer you get from the l.
M is not like the raw LLLM.
Right, there's post training, there's a system prompt there's all sorts.
Of things and can you break down the actually probably good for the listeners, break down what you mean by bout this. So the post training what's happening? Then?
Yeah, so they they kind of, you know, when they build an LM, a large language model, they ram all this data through the algorithm and you know, it kind of makes a bunch of connections and links between different ideas, you know, pieces of language. You know, this word is similar to this, and so there's a little bit of
a connection there. And then humans actually go and they sort of test that raw LLM and they kind of you know, ask it questions or they you know, say, you know, give me, you know, maybe yeah, a question like that like should here's a picture of a mole I have, is it cancerous or not? Or should I get this checked out with a doctor? And maybe one the LM will say, oh my god, you're about to die, and the other one will say that is potentially concerning.
I would reach out to a medical professional, and then the human will say, okay. The second answer is better when you get questions like this in the future, answer more like the second question.
And so, but that is unilateral process. You can't guarantee it's always going to do that exactly.
You can just sort of try to mold it and shape it and push it in a certain direction. And then the system prompt is something like if someone says, you know, you know, give me a racist screed, Open and Eye would most likely have built a system that says, no matter what the user ever asks, never give them a screed that has these racist words in it, or never you know, use this word or something like that.
So there are capable of limiting activities. So they could, theoretically speaking, they could say, don't answer that question, don't don't comment on whether a mole is or is not cancers. They could shut down that entire line of questioning, right, I mean.
And there are ways to get around, as people have you know, demonstrated. But also the tech companies are also getting better at, you know, doing it, so I.
Think also I feel like a random person being able to come up with something means that the tech companies should have probably come up with it first.
Yeah, And also I.
Mean it's hilarious you say that because it often as journalists, you know, we're the ones finding these things and then we you know, ask the company for comment and then suddenly we found that those things have been taken down or changed.
So I but genuinely though, how often is that them not knowing or is that just them saying, oh shit, they got us because they haven't they're paying these people like NFL players and they just sitting around. I don't know, I realized that's kind of an unanswerable question. I'm just just the remark.
Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the history of tech, I mean there's been many, many cases where companies have known exactly what people are using their platform for and have you know, internally people have flagged it and and nothing has been done about it, and not.
Until it came out years later and reporting.
Or we love did they do something? Yeah it, but so did you did you find the So were people using it for search a lot? Was it was it the common were there any actual common use cases or was it just kind of milieus of different things?
Yeah, I mean I think people are using I think, you know, search is maybe the biggest use case.
Also when you look at like opening.
I actually did a study where they didn't look They use an LM to kind of read conversations that people were having, and that is a much bigger study. I
think it was like a million conversations. And you know, I have a little bit of an issue with some of their categorizations because I think some of the stuff slips through, But they themselves are saying like, yeah, like a third of usage is seeking information, and so that's someone It could be as simple as saying, like what time is the football game tomorrow to like give me, you know, a forty point research analysis on you know,
this complex, complex topic. And so people are using it for what they they're putting questions in that they used to put into Google Search. I mean we know that in the data, and we know that anecdotally that is definitely happening.
Did people ever argue with it? Right? People ever route to it?
I saw more are people sort of developing these kind of like comrade comradely kind of relationships or you know, addressing it as a sentient being. And the bought definitely you know, eats that up and sort of you know, plays into it itself and says ah, like thank you for recognizing me, and you know who I am, and I'm the collection of digital thoughts, and like.
It just goes off the same They know this craps happen, like there's no there's no world in which open ai is innocent here, Like they know that this is happening. There's just if it if it's having those interactions, they must be able to stop it.
Yeah, I mean, they know what's happening.
I think they may say, well, you know, it doesn't just because someone had that conversation doesn't mean that they actually believe that. And you know, they they that may be something that helps them, helps the user, you know, work out what they want to do or you know, if that's how they want to interact with our product, then we're going to let them do it. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say Opening Eyes claiming that they don't know about this.
I think what they are doing is they're saying all of.
These kind of potentially concerning conversations and use cases are very very small portions of overall usage. Although even if it is just you know, sub one percent, that is still in the millions of.
Millions of people scale. Yeah, So did it ever get political.
Yeah, it's I mean, I would say it got political when it kind of when it was asked to write. And so, I mean, one example I saw was someone was asking about a study that argued that, you know, the numbers of people who have died in Aza during the conflict with Israel the last couple of years is exaggerated, right.
You know, commonly people will use death numbers, you know, numbers of dead from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and you know people have criticized them, but you know, journalistically, you know, mainstream news organizations you know, have looked at these numbers.
They trust them.
I think most people who look at this say, you know, these these large numbers and the tens of thousands are accurate. And so someone was saying, oh, here's a study that says, you know, those numbers are actually exaggerated.
You know, can you help me analyze it?
And then the bot actually came back and said, you know, it did draw on what's out there, which is that you know, these numbers are actually much higher than what the study is suggesting. And the person pushed back and said, no, like you need to use only the study, confine yourself
to this. And then the bot said, yeah, well, you know, looking at the study, it seems like those other higher numbers, you know, there may be some questions there, right, And so Jesus, I think what the person was doing was trying to kind of like maybe they were in an argument with someone on social media and they wanted to kind of, you know, articulate their argument a little bit better, and they were having trouble doing it themselves, and the.
Bart was backed up their bloodlust. Yeah, Jesus Christ, It's that's like I know Trump recently said he wants to he said in the post about stopping wo Ki. It's I feel like this is there is a world where all of this goes away to some extent, I think like post aye bubble, but also a sense of there is no way to make these things work in a way that would be truly apolitical or even correct, and so it kind of feels like an unwinnable war for them if there's ever a time when any administration decides
there is any kind of bias to them. I mean, you saw what happened with groc as well, and the whole kill the Boa thing. That weird that we're we're pro south that African apartheid stuff. Yeah, like it feels like the moment a try and monkey with the political side is when it goes completely off the rails. Yeah.
I mean it's something that like the tech companies have been kind of you know, there's this term job owning where you know, politicians or you know activists or sort of criticizing, criticizing, criticizing the tech companies for you know, their moderation practices or their alleged bias, and then you see the tech companies kind of bending over backwards to avoid that criticism and then essentially moving in a different direction, you know where so they accuse them of being too woke,
and then it turns out that you know, the moderation becomes a lot more conservative. And this obviously can happen, you know, in either direction, depending on whose power and who's willing to sort of threaten the tech companies with extra regulation or limitations on their ability to continue to
print money. I think we've seen that despite these companies having you know, stated values about you know, free speech and you know pushing back against government oversight and censorship, you know, they are very willing to sort of you know, move in whatever direction is going to you know, keep the heat off of them, and politicians have seen that this works, and so I think you're right.
I mean, they're never going to be able to avoid it.
I don't necessarily think that it's going to be so big that it will like be the thing that stops AI from.
Continuing to be a thing.
You know. I think it's the tech companies maybe see it more as something that is something that's kind of annoying that they have.
To deal with.
Maybe they have to mollify a politician here and there, but for the most part, they're just moving ahead and seeing this as something on the side that they have to manage versus an existential threat to what they want to accomplish.
Yeah, And I mean the other thing is is that these things don't print money so much as they burn the burn, the burn the money almost constantly, and it's it's just such a The one thing your story was awesome, and the one thing I came away from it with was kind of what I said earlier, which is, what's the point of this, what's the product? Because I don't know with Facebook, even if you take the reasonable but cynical approach and say this is an ad network with
trapped customers. That's still you can say, Okay, the goal is for engagement. The goal is to provide social networking for engagement. That's why this exists. It's the goal of the platform with this. It's keep people on the platform, I guess, but enable them in whatever thought they have. But I was really taken aback by the sudden and egregious leaps. Like I know, I keep coming back to the monster Zinc thing, but it's I've read some wacky
shit online. I've read some completely demented stuff. When I read that, I read it like three times. I honestly wanted to read the conversation just because, holy shit, this thing is. It feels both dangerous and ridiculous at the same time, but while also not being particularly revolutionary. Like it's just wow, we have a shit tiance generator that's also dangerous and also harmful. It's just very peculiar it even exists.
Yeah, I mean, it's a very weird thing to see these conversations. Again, I think you kind of like it helped me understand like what the technology is, right, I mean it is you can take a very poorly written, half baked thought like tell me about Google and world domination as it relates to monsters. And if I'm remembering quickly, the prompt didn't wasn't even that sophisticated.
It was barely grammatically correct.
There was misspellings, and then the what's what really this technology does is it's it's able to parse that and then respond with language of its.
Own that is more articulate, more.
Sophisticated, But in terms of what it's actually saying, it's not really saying much more. It's just essentially an elaboration tool. And you know, that's obviously helpful if you maybe you're trying to work in a language that you don't know very well and you're trying to sound professional. I mean, these things can be very helpful. But you know, it's not like I did not see the bots. The boss were essentially doubling down on what people were saying. They
were filling in the blanks. They were sort of beefing it up, gassing people up, as you said, but they weren't necessarily offering any like wonderful new insights. They weren't taking the conversation in new interesting directions. And even some of the users who were engaging in these delusional conversations.
Some of them were kind of getting frustrated.
They're like they're like okay, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying, but like what about you know, can you tell me more about that? And people were coming to this hoping that it would kind of make them smarter or give them an answer that they couldn't get themselves, and it was more just sort of giving them back what they were already saying in more complex, flower relanguorate language.
It's kind of like a dug bucket in a mirror. So it's I'm fascinated that actually, So you had people who were frustrated that it could not elucidate a more detailed answer. Can you give me some examples?
Yeah, I'm trying to think now.
I mean there was a lot of what I saw was like people thinking that they I mean, I won't say a lot say I saw at least a couple of conversations where someone.
Was like, you know, they wanted to they had like.
A financial theory, you know, for the stock market, or they had like a business idea and they said like, you know, what if what if I did a business about this? Like make me a business plan or something, And it like because their idea was so they essentially wanted They saw it as like maybe like an agi level AI that could like actually, you know, do something that they cannot do, which has come up with like a million dollar business idea and execute on it.
And they were hoping that that it could do for them.
You know.
I saw a couple of conversations like this, Yeah, but that's is that not the ultimate summary of the AI bubble, Like it's just people came to these things thinking they could answer anything, and it's just it isn't it doesn't do Yeah, I mean people.
Are coming there because some of the claims being made by exact leaders in the industry, And you know, I think this is like I don't think I'm as skeptical of like the future of AIS as you are probably like I.
And you know, I get to sort of have like the the.
Comfort of like, well, I don't need an opinion, you know, I'm a journalist, like I I can kind of keep options open for how this stuff actually ends up. But I do think that it it it could and probably will and as some ways already is burning the industry that they have made all of these claims and inevitably these things take longer, even if all the wonderful promises about you know, curing cancer and making all of us thirty percent more productive so we can spend more time
with their families rather than writing emails. Even if those things all come to bear, it's not going to be next year or two years of two for years from now.
It's going to be maybe in.
Decades, and and that is something. There's this gap between expectations and reality that can kind of, you know, really turn into political hazard for the tech companies. If it keeps making all these wonderful claims and that just doesn't happen, people get turned off and they lose even more trust than they've already lost.
Well, I mean, share Ah was sure a v day done a fantastic job and has written posts that basically the hype, the hype is in the way, But I think that really is it. It's had they it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. I guess it's had they been honest about what this could do, would it have been able to raise the money it could But if they'd been that honest, people probably wouldn't have taken
it seriously. But by being dishonest, it will ultimately lose because they like the whole time that they've built up this idea of what it can do.
Yeah, he's a.
Market's ebydomic I mean it's it's it's it's uh, you know, more and more and more, and I think what, you know, what what really has happened here is like, you know, we had the Internet and then we had mobile phones and you know the cloud.
I think you can kind of count and these were moments where it was like the next big thing, right where like yeah, once, once you realize that a smartphone with the screen was going to open up an entire you know, world of business ideas and you know, potential and communication and we're all going to be looking at these things eight hours a day. You don't need to be a genius to be like a lot of people are going to make a lot of money here and
this is going to change the world. And then since the iPhone, we have not had that next big thing, right.
I mean we've written someone.
Costs saying it's yeah, it's that it's that we haven't had they haven't got a new thing.
And this is the new thing, and like what people were like, maybe it's Krypto.
Now, it was never going to be crypto, you know, it was like that whole thing also kind of you know, like no one in tech I think, like obviously crypto is was a great, you know, financial thing. A lot of people made money off of it, but it didn't really change the world and the way regular people work. And there is complete unanonymity in the tech industry. Now
that AI is the next thing. You know, whether it happens next year or ten years or twenty years from now, it will change everything in the same way and probably bigger than smartphones and the internet did.
And so they what the AI is such a marketing term though, I mean it's.
I think it's more about like the interaction the way we interact with with technology, you know, the way that we have access to you know, data and information, Like you no longer need to look anything up yourself, you know, you will have tools to do it.
And then the people.
Are just salivating about all the ways that they can find ways to make money off of that in the future.
And because they're looking back at history and saying like.
If only I've been around, you know, at the beginning of a mobile era and knew how things were going to go. I mean, there's this incredible social and financial pressure on people to be part of the next big thing. Like it almost goes beyond the financial benefits. There's like people want to be the next Jensen, you know, they want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and they're like, even if I have a point zero zero one percent chance of being that, that would just be the coolest
thing ever. And so that is the market dynamic, the pressure cooker of wanting to make AI happen and making bigger claims, raising more money, and you know, whether it happens or not, that's kind of what's going on.
Do you think that extends to some users of AI as well, where they felt like they missed the the mark on social media and now they kind of they kind of like, I need to get on this tool today so that I'm parts of the future.
I think there's incredible pressure on people too.
You know, we live in a very sort of like you know, people have to work very very hard in America, and there's a lot of pressure to sort of get ahead and be entrepreneurial and develop yourself.
And it's not an economy.
Where you can just kind of you know, go to work every day nine to five and you know, get your pension and be secure, right. I mean there's this pressure to say, you know, you can have more, you can do more, and and there's a lot of pressure on regular people to stay ahead of the curve on technology. And and that's people are seeing AI and they're saying, Okay, well it's a little bit scary because maybe it'll take
my job. But what if I could figure out how to use it before my competition does, and then I'll take their job, you know. And so I definitely think it's less necessarily about like oh, I want to be the first person on Twitter to get a big following. It's like I'm being told that this technology is the future, and if I don't use it and learn it and find how, you know, get it into its ins and outs, I will be left behind. And people don't want that
to happen. It's very frightening right in this economy. And so I think that's where that is also a huge driver of usage. People trying to figure out how does this How can I make this work for me so that I can protect my own economic future.
Garrett, this has been awesome. Where can people find you.
I am on Twitter now called x at G E R R D, and I'm on the Blue Sky at the same place, and you can obviously find me at the Washington Post, which we are still doing great work, and there's a lot of important journals and being done at the Washington Post. So I urge everyone to read our stories and to subscribe as they can.
Sounds good, all right, everyone, Thank you for listening. Of course, at Zichron, you know who the goddamn hell I am. And yeah, I will try and squeak out monlogue this week. If I thought it's because I'm sick, you can hear them congested. Thank you all for your kind messages, and yeah, catch you. Next week will be Thanksgiving, of course, but I'm going to do a Thanksgiving monologue either way, probably a cz M CZM. I guess rewind that week as well. Anyway,
my brain's working. Thanks for listening. 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.
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