From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff.
I'm as Voloscian and I'm Carera Price.
Today we'll get into the headlines this week, including Nepal's failed social media band turned government takeover, and a look at the newest generation of tech founders. Then on chatting me.
Chasubt has become kind of like a partner that makes managing health and lifestyle simple.
All of that On the Week in Tech. It's Friday, September twenty sixth.
Hello, Cara Hias.
Nice to see you. It's been a couple of weeks where we've been remote, you've abandoned me. It's good to be back with you in person.
Dirty gritty New York City.
Speaking of dirty grit in New York City, how often you go to Brian Park?
Why not to go inside Brian Park? But I take the subway to Brian Park once a week on Thursday's Goo Therapy. But this week and you're trying not to go anywhere because this un week has completely unga, snarled traffic and the.
Dirtiest word in the New york Er Dictionary unga.
Why do you ask, though, because.
Brian Park is not where the Center of Fashion is in Manhattan. It is where I found my most beloved new toy. Her name is Belonce.
Belonce.
She's actually not she doesn't belong to me, but she is the robot lawnmower of Brian Park.
Well, she's got a good name.
I wish I came up with the name Belonce.
I did not.
I read about it in the Washington Post and then I actually went to the park to check it out.
You did some reporting.
She's gorgeous. How in the flesh she's gorgeous?
Is there anything significant about Belonce other than her fabulous name?
Nothing is insignificant about Belonce. She's a four thousand dollars rumba, essentially, and she's run via an app which tells her when and where to mow. So you tell her where to go, she does her thing, and then very cutely, she rolls herself back to her charger after a few hours. And I think it goes without saying that all of these electric robot lawnmowers are much in quotes greener than their gas guzzling human controlled counterparts.
My mother also has a semi autonomous robot lawnmower at her house. I'm not sure if that's because of her concern for gas guzzling. But it is interesting how these kind of almost sci fi type robots have become so normalized that people think you're crazy for going to look at one in action. I am curious though. Obviously in the previously owned garden, you know, a Belonce going about her business is racally safe. But I can imagine the cut in trust of New York City, you know, vandalism, theft.
All dirt, the grimy crime of New York City. Actually, that Belonce wouldn't be safe.
Yeah, I was worried about her.
Well, she is safe.
You want to know why there's a ton of security in brime. She's also not the first she has peers. There were several others tested, including l lawn James got.
Who comes up with this? Mum? If you're listening, Karen, do you have any suggestions for what the garden lawnmower could be rechristened?
Okay, so I have actually five because one of our genius producers asked an AI chatbot for a few more lawn pun names.
Here we go. My favorite, Trimothy Shallome.
Mozart, Yeah, fine, eh, post Malone, ye ye grass, light Year, and fine, another great one a lawn musk.
That's my favorite. MS. Okay, we got it.
So that is my lighthearted contribution for today. If you are in New York City, go check out belonce. She'll be waiting for you. I have to switch gears a little bit for my next story. How familiar are you with Discord.
I've had about Discord for many years. I've never actually used it a gamer. I'm not a gamer. I know it's kind of like a live platform for simultaneous discussion, and unfortunately, my life is so sad that the closest analogy I can think of is the work productivity tool Slack.
Slack is a game for you.
Unfortunately, you're like, oh, you mean Slack's Ega Genesis. Well, the reason I ask you, and I think you'll be interested in this. Discord recently played a very big role in a revolution.
I actually I actually heard about this a little bit intil some headlines. This is in Nepal, that's right.
So in the course of a week, the country banned social media, erupted in gen z led protest, ousted, their prime minister, solicited recommendations for an interim replacement on chat GBT, and then elected an interim leader on discord.
Talk about tech stuff.
It really is a tech stuff story.
Yeah, I don't know that much about Nepal. I know it's in the Himalayas. I know it's where Mount Everest is. Yes, it borders China and India. But why did this happen there? Like, what's the background?
So actually Nepal was traditionally a monarchy, right, but a democratic government was founded less than twenty years ago. Nepal is the second poorest country in South Asia, the first being Afghanistan. And a few weeks ago there was a massive TikTok trend among youth and Nepal called hashtag Nepo kids. So social media users were posting videos showing the wealthy lifestyles of the children of Nepal's leaders. So think images of politicians' kids posing in front of Christmas trees made
out of Louis Vuitton and Cardier boxes. These images were being juxtaposed with images of the day to day struggles of regular people in Nepal. So there are images of malnourished children, floods, decimated housing, and overall poverty.
Yeah, that's quite a stark juxtaposition. And I can't imagine government ministers felt too good about their children being juxtaposed with children suffering malnourishment and poverty. No, and it.
Actually it led to the government banning twenty six social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, purportedly in the name of battling fake news, hate speech, and online fraud, which obviously people are not buying.
Yeah, I wouldn't buy that either. When did the band come into effect?
On my birthday?
September fourth, hap your birthday?
The following Monday, Thousands of young people took to the streets. So some government buildings were burned down, including the Prime Minister's office, and according to Reuter's there was a violent crackdown and about seventy two people were actually killed in the protest and subsequent fires.
Yeah, this sounds like, I mean, eerily familiar in terms of the Arab Spring of fifteen years ago. What happened next in Nepal?
So the social media ban was reversed almost immediately after protests began, and on Tuesday, September ninth, the Prime minister resigned and fled the country. Then the military pretty much took over and put a curfew in place. And so you know, what do people do when they're force to stay inside, They go back on life, That's right, they
go online. So over one hundred thousand people, including a number of organizing groups, spent several days on Discord working to come up with an interim leader who the military would actually cooperate with and accept. There were discussions taking place on Discord, filled with you know, everything you'd expect on discord, memes, insults, and there were some genuinely earnest you know, suggestions and polls.
Right.
Young activists argued over the future leadership of the country, and some even turned to chat GPT for help. You know, one group asked chat to identify potential candidates for the interim leadership position, and so when they were provided a list of qualified candidates, they went back to chat gpt and asked it to debate the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.
Well and chat gate good advice, it seemed to you know.
Chat gpt actually provided many qualified candidates, including one woman who had been selected by a dominant gen Z collective to lead negotiations with the military. This was Sushila Karki. She's seventy three years old. She's not, you know, a
young discord user herself. She's a former Chief Justice and well known anti corruption crusader, and according to the Sri Lankan Guardian, Chatchept advised the quote, she seems likely to command trust across different groups and could help oversee reforms and the path to fare elections.
And so far, so good.
You know, after some chaos, the discord community decided to have her be the new interim leader of Nepal. And she's actually putting together a cabinet right now and will hold elections for a new prime minister in about six months.
This is an amazing story. This is uncanny online, offline metaverse discord chatchpt, real life protests, new leaders. I mean, what's so interesting to me about this story is just how borderless it is. For example, the mascot of this revolution is the pirate flag from the Japanese anime series One Piece. Have you watched One Piece?
I know about it, I'm aware of it.
So CNN describes it as quote the swashbuckling story, and I always loved the swashbuckling story. To the swashbuckling story of the charming pirate captain Monkey d Loofy and his misfit straw hat crew. CNN continues to one piece fans. The flag symbolizes Lufi's quest to chase his dreams, liberate
oppressed people, and fight the autocratic world government. That flag, from a Japanese anime series has now been seen flying not just in Nepal, but also in Indonesia and the Philippines, countries that are both recently had their own gen Z uprisings over government corruptions. I was in an uber this morning in gridlock traffic in Midtown, so got chatting. My driver was from Nepal, Lucky, and so I asked him, you know, what do you think about this story? He said, Look,
this isn't really a story about Nepal. This is much bigger than Nepal. This is about a group of people, young people who refuse to be bound by the political conventions, the political institutions, or the political establishment of their country and instead insisted on having their voice and on a new political reality. And his point was this is really borderers.
And he even said it could happen here. I don't know if it really could happen here, but the optimism which he brought in the excitement reminded me of the early days of the Arab Spring, which obviously followed by what people talk about as the Arab Winter. But it'll be interesting to see what happens next.
Yeah, you know, for year, social media companies talked about how their platforms could democratize the Internet and bring people together. And in the US, as we know, they've mostly proven to be divisive and polarizing, you know, que the recent discussion about the rhetoric and online communities that motivated Tyler Robinson who is now in custody for killing Charlie Kirk.
But in Nepal they were able to have a transparent exercise in direct democracy, of course, with the help of Discord and unbelievably generative AI.
And this brings me to our next stories. So while gen Z and Nepal is interested in using AI and discord a topple government and bring more direct experience of democracy, gen Z in America is focused on getting rich.
Who isn't true?
Who isn't So basically, there was a great story in the Wall Street Journal that I read. I mean, the headline was AI startup founders taut a winning formula, no booze, no sleep, no fun. And what the story is really about is how back in the early two thousands there was this like hustle culture there was. It was celebrated in the movie The Social Network. You know, it was this time of college dropouts and the consumer internet was
being born. People were living in dormitories and you know, doing business with each other and kind of sacrificing that the normal pleasures of youth to build these companies that became Facebook and Google or whatever else and became you know, multi multi billionaires. In the intervening time, Silicon Valley kind of settled into a normal you know, corporate America. People had great benefits, they're normal working hours, they made great money, et cetera, et cetera, and that seemed to be kind
of the new norm. And you saw this like generation of people who were you know, not all about hustle culture, about you know, have a balance in their private lives.
Exact life balance, a balance.
Now there are new fortunes to be made, and there are new threats to the stable assumptions of what it was to be you know, a knowledge worker in your early twenties. And so with a vengeance, this hustle culture seems to have returned.
So what does that look like exactly?
You know, are founders sleeping under their deaths, working all the time, have no social I mean, that's that's what I think of when I think about sort of early Facebook.
Yeah, exactly that, but that someone that are even younger than they were. So The General profiled an eighteen year old from Kazakhstan named Arlan. He dropped out of school in his junior year of high school after creating an AI tool that led him getting a summer research job at Stanford. After that, he was accepted to why Combinator, which is this very famous startup incubator that helped develop
companies like door Dash and Airbnb. He said that being steps to why Combinator been his dream since he was ten.
Years old, which was eight years ago.
Exactly. Jeez, that really puts his perspective to From there, Arlan received a million dollars in funding and moved from Kazakhstan to San Francisco again. According to the Journal, he always carries his laptop with him and works quote while out walking, during dinners, at the laundromat and on the.
Toy because we're moving fast and breaking things, because we have add.
Well, yeah, I mean, obviously the phone in the toilet is a particularly bad habit, but I think Arlan is like debugging software, I think, rather than texting. The journal reported that even after dinner with other founders, Arlan will go to meetings with potential clients until one am. He said, quote, I'm trying to be in the sprint mode always. I never tried to divide working on startup and my social life. And Arline even convinced his father brother to move to
the US where they're working on their own AI startups. Again, he's eighteen years old.
What does he mean when he says he never tried to divide his startup in a social life.
Yeah, I mean, so you know, it's not like he never socializes with other people. Like the startup founders obviously understand that having a network is a key part of succeeding. They don't waste their time and they don't socialize for fun. But apparently one of the things which is in vogue as a way of socializing is something you know quite a lot about, which is book clubs.
Interesting.
I didn't realize that you run a book club I do. What do you think motivates your members? To be part of the book club. It's called Bellatris.
Yes, thank you.
Check it out on Instagram and on the websitewwwl tris dot com. I think when we started at what motivated people was this idea that we were increasingly on our phones all the time. Like in the early twentieth century, when paperbacks really started to hit the market, people were worried that people would be.
Reading too much.
Much. Now, I think a lot of people have said to me, you know, I'm devoted to reading in the way that I'm devoted to exercise, in the sense of it's bringing my mind offline in a way that not much else is.
And I think one of the interesting things in Silicon Value there's this thing going on where there's interest in Roman history and military history and all this this kind of idea that to be a successful founder, Yes, there's a lot of hustle, but also kind of living in the world of grand ideas and intellectual frameworks and stuff is also important.
One of the things that's surprising about this article, and you're describing in it, is like I was under the impression that gen Z was like quiet, quitting and taking time for themselves.
Yeah, I think that comes back to what I was saying at the beginning, which is there's probably like there may be a bifurcation between like elder gen Z and younger gen Z. I mean, life was economically before the air evolution, like the corporate job market was much more secure than is now, and also like new fortunes were not being made, like the tech companies were so dominant. There's all that focus on how you needed anti trust regulation otherwise no new companies would emerge. And then jen
Ai came along and it just shattered the landscape. And so now you have these extraordinary you know, dreamers like our Land moving from Kazakhstan to try and make it in the valley. It's something that's always happened, I think, But this you know, return of hustle culture with a vengeance is really interesting. There was a bit in a story that really made me think, which is that a bunch of the young founders refer to this concept of nine ninety six. Do you not? Nine ninety six is?
I do? But please describe it because I want people to.
Know, well, nine ninety six is actually a concept that emerged in China, and this was basically a kind of work as hard as you can nine am to nine pm, six days a week, so every day you one day
off and otherwise you work twelve hours a day. And this was kind of like a little bit of a boogey man of like people look at China and think, oh my god, this is a whole generation of young people who are killing them by working too hard in the tech sector, and you know, actually suicides, and there's a lot of horrible kind of ansidiary reporting around this
nine ninety six culture. But it's now evidently like a meme not so dissimilar to the Pirate flag, been absorbed by a certain sector of youth population of Silicon Valley as something to aspire to. And I just find that really really interesting.
It is very strange because we came of age in a time where burnout culture was such a buzzword. This is literally touting burnout culture as the way to live and as the way to make money, which is interesting. I mean, if you think of prior generations of immigrant populations, like burnout was a way to build wealth in this country. If you came to this country and if your relatives were meant to come to this country, it wasn't like if you owned a dry cleaner, for example, you.
It nine ninety six was there was another work.
Life balance at the dry cleaner. And I think what's interesting is it's the type of businesses that people are building that has changed. But there has always been a mentality in this country of like, we come to America to make wealth.
See I think you're right to your point. AI is exactly that. Like it's a chimera, like it's a dream, it's anything you want it to be. And so it's literally a moment where like for a certain group of people it feels like anything's possible, although of course the reality is most of them will be very burnt out and not have very valuable businesses at the end of it.
You know, your pal Jeff Hinton, who was a tech stuff guest and the so called godfather of AI, recently gave an interview to The Financial Times where he said, quote, AI will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. So I think we kind of are aware of this on a macro level, but it's interesting to see it play out in the Petri dish of Silicon Valley. You know how hard these kids are willing to fight for a slice of the AI PI while like all of these entry level jobs are being slashed.
After the break, some more headlines. The FDC is taking Amazon to trial, Albania has an AI minister of corruption, and Russia has an AI generated television show. Then on Chat to me Chat helps one tech stuff listener navigate a scary diagnosis. Stay with us. We're back, and in honor of you, m week, We've got a couple more global headlines for you. But first, Kara, are you an Amazon Prime member?
I am?
Do you remember when you signed up? Oh?
God, years ago, years ago?
Probably the free delivery gotcha easily.
Yeah, me too, just hauling it prime.
Yeah, it's like I want to be the prime USDA. H yeah, so that's a good thing. Prime. However, the Federal Trade Commission is taking Amazon to trial this week overclaims they tricked millions of people into signing up for Prime. I did it with my eyes open, but apparently millions of others did not. And the laws it was actually first filed, interestingly during the Biden administration back in twenty twenty three, but the trial just started on Monday.
Why does the FDC think that people were tricked?
Well, you want to hear from the comp I do.
I'm not going to read it.
The complaint filed by the FTC says, quote Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user interface designs known as dark patterns to treat consumers into enrolling and automatically renewing prime subscriptions. Cancline subscription was made intentionally more difficult than signing up for one, and the complaint calls the cancelation process quote labyrinthine is how you say labyrinth thine, labyrinthine.
I think it's labyrinthine, labyrinthine.
Get this. Internally at Amazon, the cancelation process was called quote, an unspoken cancer, and it was referred to as the Iliad flow, as in the Greek epic poem about a hero's journey through the protracted Trojan war.
I love these nerds, That's why, I mean, just internally what they call things.
But what does the Iliad flow entail?
Well, it kind of entails what you'd do, imagine, which is being extremely hard to get from A to B. And they knew, and they knew, and they were making a joke about it. But specifically, the complaint says that in order to go through the process of unsubscribing. On the site, customers had to navigate through four pages, six clicks,
and fifteen various options. And there are also a ton of sort of chances along the way to unknowingly stop canceling, warnings about losing benefits, promotional offers, all intended to distract you or convince you not to cancel. Whereas guess how many clicks it takes to sign up for Prime?
Not a lot.
I'm actually surprised it wasn't just one, but absolutely Since the court filing, Amazon has actually already changed the process. There's now a well labeled and easy to understand cancelation page. But the outcome of the trial is still worth keeping an eye on because it could impact the future of canceling subscriptions for all kinds of companies. And it is
unbelievably hard and annoying to cancel subscriptions. The worst subscription cancelation I ever had was the Times Literary supplement We had to Call, We Have.
To Call, which is run by Abacus.
If I'm not mistaken, it's actually I've watched my mom almost being brought to tears by cancelation.
It's evil. Some of the cancelation.
Tactes are evil, dark patterns.
It feels malicious, high listeners.
This is oz. I wanted to let you know that the day after we recorded the episode, there was actually an outcome to the trial. Amazon settled with the FTC for two point five billion dollars. By settling, they admitted no wrongdoing. But we'll keep an eye out on what this outcome means for subscription cancelation overall. But now back to our episode and our next short headline. How much do you know about Albanian politics?
Literally nothing, which is embarrassing, but nothing.
Not that embrassing. I've actually been to our not too long ago. It's really quite a fascinating country that's had a meteoric rise post communism. It's in this very strategic location between East and West, and so you know, the US and Europeans are quite supportive. But there's also terrible problems with organized crime. And actually a lot of the drug trafficking through the port of Rotterdam from South America
is controlled by Albanian organized crime. And recently Albania became the first country in the world to appoint an AI generated government minister.
How does that work?
Good question? I'll start with her name, Della, which means sun in Albania. That's Della has actually been around since January. She started life as an AI assistant designed to help people navigate online government services.
So she's actually worked her.
This is this is a real uh yeah, brags to Rich's journey for Della. She has reached promoted to cabinet minister in charge of public procurement. Essentially, she'll be analyzing government contracts for corruption. Would you like to meet her?
But I'm dying to meet her. Also, this feels ripe for corruption.
Well we'll get We'll get to that in a minute, but first, here's d'ella.
The samoanchuitor Anti coustets I Kim Kalandur.
So this is an AI generated person that I'm looking at.
This is an AI generated person wearing traditional Albanian dress against the backdrop of the Albanian flag and the EU.
Flag its state sponsor TV.
She's talking in Albanian, but luckily there are subtitles. She says, some have labeled me unconstitutional because I'm not a human being. That hurt me, not for myself, but for the nine hundred and seventy two thousand interactions I had with citizens whom I served as part of E Albania ABBE. This is well, that's the beginning of her career when she
was bootstrapping, Yeah, exactly. She emphasized that as an AI she has no ambitions or personal interests, which makes her perfectly suited to the job of making sure government contracts impartial and corruption free. The Prime Minister of Albania, Eddie Ramer, said Diella would help make Albania quote a country where public tenders are one hundred percent free of corruption, one
hundred percent free of corruption. I methinks the Prime Minister does protest too much, and some citizens of Albania are also quite dubious. One Facebook user quote in The Guardian said, in Albania, even Diella will be corrupted.
I mean talk about AI hallucination, AI corruption, I think is the next frontier. You know, it's funny that you bring this up, because my next headline is also about state sponsored AI. I read this article in four or four media about a news satire show which recently premiered on Russian state TV, and it's apparently all AI generated.
So what does state funded political AI slop entail?
So, according to ads for the show. They've got a neural network deciding the content and topics for each episode, and then that same neural network uses AI to generate video. So it's been creating content like, you know, amazing stuff like President Trump singing songs, French President Emmanuel Macron wearing hair curlers and a pink robe. An ad for the show claims, quote the editorial team's opinion may not coincide with the AIS, though usually it does.
Do you think that's it has to be?
Poll It Stacker, which is the name of the show, is not just news but a tough breakdown of political madness from a digital host who notices what others overlook. Russia's Ministry of Defense actually owns the TV channel where it airs.
I'm curious about this this show though, I mean it like obvious that it's made by AI. How does the AI show up in the show?
Well, there's a data scientist named Kalev Letaru from Georgetown. He's the one who found the show originally, and he says, at times, if you don't know it was AI, you might never guess that it looks a lot like other Russian propaganda. And he says further, if they are using AI to the degree that they say they are, even if it's just to pick topics. They mastered that formula in a way that others have not. You know, there are parts that are unmistakable AI, like deep fake interviews
with world leaders. In one of those interviews, Trump says he'll end the Russia Ukraine war by building a casino in Moscow with golden toilets. But the AI seems to have Trump's pattern of speech down pretty well. To quote him in one of these videos, all the Russian oligarchs, they would all be inside, all their money would be inside.
Problem solved.
They would just play poker and forget about the whole war. A very bad deal for them, very distracting.
It's funny, you know, big fears when when gerative AI really took off, that we would all be tricked and transfixed by deep fakes of world leaders and you know, political events would be dictated by fake media. Instead, what seems to have happened is that deep fakes have kind
of evolved the medium of the meme. Like instead of a meme, now you kind of create a deep fake scenario of the thing you're trying to make fun of and it's funny that, you know, Trump is talking about building a casino in Moscow in this Russian satire AI show, because on Trump's own AI satire social media channels, he's making content about turning Gaza into a riviera. So there's a funny like you know, doubleness here where it's odd that the primary expression of deep fake content right now
is political satire. And now it's time for our final segment of the day, Chat and Me. Today's submission is from Jeremy, who is an early adopter of Chat GPT, a self described chat evangelist, and of course a tech stuff listener.
I like anyone who's a self described tex stuff listener.
I like anyone who text stuff listener, not self described thank you.
So, while Jeremy uses Chat for all sorts of tasks, there's one in particular that he thinks is of note.
One of the biggest ways it helps me. It's like health tracking both me and my dog. Actually, what I do is I log my Apple Watch stats after hikes, workouts, and then I upload that information into chat GBT and it just breaks those numbers down in a way that actually makes sense to me. So I can kind of see my progress over time.
There is a plot twist coming. Jeremy doesn't just track his workouts. He also tracks his food with the help of chat GPT, and he actually is a really powerful incentive.
I was recently diagnosed with pre diabetes, so I'm trying to kind of be a little more careful what I eat. Instead of just guessing what I eat and the nutritional value of information, I basically just log my daily foods. Whatever I eat, I take a picture of what I eat, and I just uploaded the chat GPT and it kind of just breaks all their down. You know, the calorie corp, sugar, protein are there.
You know, I can imagine if you're dealing with a diagnosis like pre diabetes, not only do you have to come to terms with this new health reality emotionally, you also very practically have to build a new routine that takes into account all kinds of new health priorities. You know, obviously, the doctors can give you strict guidelines about what to do in order to make sure your blood sugar levels don't spike in terms of proteins and fats and carbohydrates.
But actually what Jeremy's doing is translating that into real life, seeing what chatchpt says about it and how that may track with the guidelines he's trying to follow. We've talked a lot about medicine and AI, and the classic is always like, can the AI outdiagnose a doctor, which in many cases it seems like it can, but the majority of medicine is not really diagnosis. It's actually preventative health
and patient compliance with doctor's recommendations and stuff. And so this is actually the first I really heard of not using AI so much just to diagnose an illness, but actually to turn it into a tool to help manage your condition. And I think it's pretty cool.
Yeah, it's a little bit like your medical concierge that leaves the doctor's office with you exactly.
That.
Don't forget. We want to hear from you, our listeners, so please send your chat stories to our inbox tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
That's it for this week for Tech Stuff.
I'm Kara Price and I'm os Voloshin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer is Beheit. Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrote out theme song.
Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story for a look at a beloved American industry that is benefiting and being destroyed by AI Hollywood.
Please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love hearing from you.