Hi everyone, os Vloshin, co host of Sleepwalkers.
Here.
I know it's been a few years since our original series run, but I'm here with an exciting announcement. We are relaunching this feed, but instead of me and Karen Price's host since Karen and I and our partners in hosting tech Stuff, which is on twice a week check it out, We're bringing on journalists Dexa Thomas to shepherd the next iteration of this show. Dexter, Welcome, yo us.
I'm very happy to be here with you and hopefully build on the original show, which I think in a lot of ways predicted where we're at right now.
Yeah, we launched it in twenty nineteen, and you know, AI was already kind of bubbling, but we were starting to see these things that Karen and I called crash sites, where like a new technology and a real person would collide in a way that could be very traumatic or that could be kind of wonderful. I think everyone in twenty nineteen was kind of still wondering though, like, is AI really going to become a thing, Like these trends are kind of going to be a like the metaverse?
Or is this going to really take off, and I think since then it has taken off, and I think these these crash sites are going to become more and more important to explore.
Yeah, you know, one of the reasons to relaunch the show is because a lot of what you were covering in the first iteration of the show, at that point it's still felt like the future. But now I think in twenty twenty five, it's either here right now and it's kind of boring, or it's about to be. I mean, you all were discussed.
Us ever great nun kidding, No, no.
No, I mean, you know in the sense in the sense that oh Ai, yeah, I know about that, you know. I mean I think when when you all first started llm's was something that basically just a few computer science has had access to. I mean, you had to go and visit somebody and you know, talk about liar bird. I mean, liar Bird now is almost completely unremarkable because it's what we use to edit podcasts. It's just part
of software that we use every day. And I think it's at this point so much of what you all were talking about as this is coming or this might come someday is completely normal, you know, and we almost don't think about it as technology anymore. And and so in some ways, you know, the way that you talk about the show, and the way that I think originally you two had been introducing the show is Okay, this is a show about the way that technology affects people's lives.
It's almost hard to introduce a show as that now because it's it almost the response when I even try to tell people sometimes it's like sex sual. Yeah, Okay, what are you going to talk about? Because I think technology has just become kind of the background hum of our everyday life. But I would argue that that's precisely why we need a show about how technology affects our lives, because it's still there. It's not just part of the background.
It's it's something that we have choices about and that we really should be thinking about.
I think that's really well put. What kinds of things you interested in exploring on the show?
Yeah, so I know that one of your first episodes actually was about facial recognition. You go visit the NYPD, and you know, NYPD obviously massive police department, very technologically adept, and they promise you that, hey, listen, we're using facial recognition very carefully. We're very serious about it. And back then it seemed like something Okay, well only the most advanced police departments have this, and well they say they're
being careful with it. Now this is something that rural police departments all across America have access to, and it's putting innocent people in jail, and so I think that's really something we should be thinking about. And we talk to a reporter who's covered it, and we hear actually from some people that this is affected who've been arrested because the computer thought they did something and they weren't
even in the area. There's another episode of Working on which shows you how people are making money doing things like generating fake AI videos of natural disasters or baby animals, and you know, another thing, and maybe this is just a personal thing for me. I feel like the DIY and the hacker ethos has kind of left tech and hopefully we can at least bring that back a little bit or provide a place for that can come back.
And I think there's some more practical stuff too, like how can you mitigate the risk that you're gonna get hacked again. I think these are things that just have kind of passed us by in terms of we've gotten really used to, Oh well, just let Apple handle this for us, just let Google handle this. Firust No, let's do this ourselves. That's what makes this technology stuff fun, at least for me.
I think you're you're exactly right. So I'm really happy that you're taking a show on.
There's a few places where hopefully we're picking up the baton a little bit in something that you predicted a little bit, and we're able to keep that going and say, Okay, here's where we are right now. This is no longer science fiction. This is your everyday life. What are we going to do about this?
We call the original show Sleepwalkers. There was actually a book about the origins of the First World War with that title, and part of the thesis was that, you know, you had this moment where the industrial revolution had happened, and so you had like trains and telegraphs and gas and automatic weapons, and all of a sudden there was a conflict that got bigger and bigger and bigger, and all of these technologies that kind of existed as one
offs coalesced on the battlefield and we'll use, you know, to create carnage and kill millions of millions of people. So the name was a little bit of a warning, is to say, like, these new technologies are here, even if they're still hiding in plain sight. You, as part of the of the rebrand and the relaunch, I think, have chosen a new name.
Yeah, so we're calling it kill switch. And I'm going to mix metaphors here a little bit, so bear with me. But you know a kill switch. I think we all know what that is. Basically, it's a safety mechanism for if a machine starts going nuts, you can disable it. And I think some of the inspiration behind the name is it theoretically, these are all machines, these are computers. We can turn these off, right, but it's really hard
to imagine turning it off now. And to borrow from what your iteration of the show was doing, is I think we've actually sleep walked up to a point where we don't even know where the switch is anymore. If we wanted to turn it off, we don't know where
it is. And I think the show that you were hosting kind of predicted this, is that we're in this really interesting paradox where the more user friendly technology gets the less tech literate we are, and I want to continue to interrogate that and say, no, don't just offer me these fun new products. Don't just cram AI to everything. I want to know how this stuff works. And I think we should continue to ask that question. And you know, maybe we need to start looking for the kill.
Switch very well put deck. So I already can't wait to hit the show and feel come and tech stuff one of these days as well to tell us about the show. When isn't it Stride? But in the meantime, when's it launch?
First off, I would love to and please, the door is always open. You made the door. Please come on in anytime you want. But yeah, first episode drops April twenty third, and anywhere you get your podcasts you can listen to it.