From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff. I'm Os Voloscian and I'm care Price. Today we're going to get into a communications network built for the end of the world, and why the US is placing tracking devices in AI chip shipments. Then on chat to me your next makeover brought to you by AI. All of that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, August twenty second. Hello, Hello Cara.
Hi auhs. Do you remember when we talked about the half marathon between humans and robots.
The one in China? I remember, yes, right.
There are now robot Olympians and I'm talking about the humanoid robot games in Beijing.
I didn't know about this, but it does make me think of my childhood as an only child. In England in the late nineties there were you I know, there are originally four terrestrial TV channels, and then a fifth was launch called Channel five, and Channel five had slightly more racy content, including at seven pm every Friday night a show called Robot Wars where various middle aged hobbyists would have their extremely slow robots bump into each other
and then break. But the commentator really brought the energy and so it was. It was better than whatever else was on TV for me, at least as a child. That's a long rambling response. Is what you're talking about?
You had the viewing taste of a middle aged British man.
I did, and I still do.
It's not it's a little bit what I'm talking about. Let me give a little bit of context. So these games took place over three days in Beijing, and they actually used some of the facilities that were built for the twenty twenty two Winter Olympics. There were two hundred
and eighty teams from sixteen countries, including the US. The competitions include soccer, running, kickboxing, which is sort of like what you were talking about, basketball, table tennis, and then strangely enough, factory work and warehouse warehouse navigation robots.
Were like, we got this, truly some must watch sports. That's an interesting interesting They kind of brought the hype with the kickboxing, but then what they're really flexing was we got the rick and wac pick and pack. We got pick and pack down.
To a t. Here we go. Yeah, I mean the whole thing was definitely designed to wow. The opening ceremony, as opening ceremonies do included dozens of robots dancing, doing martial arts, playing drums and sink which you might remember from the two thousand and eight Beijing opening ceremony. I think it was sort of like, look, the robots can do what humans did at the Olympics. Let me just show you a video because it's inexplicable.
We have a real man playing a piano facing a robot in a silver cape also playing.
Oh, and here comes a robot in a bucket hat. Oh.
Now there's real kids jumping around behind the bucket hat robots.
And they're dancing. Some of the robots don't seem to be complying very well.
This is a surprisingly low rent. In any case, the production values are not as high and are not that much different Channel five, nineteen ninety eight. I mean there is a sense of evolution from the TV show of my childhood. I'm kind of surprised, but I actually thought that it would be more wow factor.
Yeah, you know, I watched a little bit more of the video and it definitely left a bit to be desired across the board, you know, in the track and field, and android ran full speed into one of the robot operators, knocking him down and then he just kept running, which you know, when they say the robots are taking over, that's what I imagine. Everybody was fine, though, don't worry. And the boxing robots, let's just say they miss their target.
They managed to barely punch each other at all, flailing through the air until the refs just gave up and were like, this one wins.
Whatever I saw a Ziemaza has a great newsletter called Exponential View, and he put something on his LinkedIn my favorite source of truth saying basically, this is a cute story, but watch out because by twenty thirty it's going to be a thirty five to fifty billion dollar industry. What kind of reactions do you see.
Well, it's obvious that there's still a long way to go before robots are capable of outperforming elite athletes or outperforming elite dance squads. But that's sort of besides the point. Those participating in the games were really there to collect data. The robot games were a great way for these teams to keep developing robots for more practical applications like factory work. But as one robotics professor said to The New York Times, robots are still dumb, haush.
You know, these games are interesting in the fact their station in Beijing and that the US participated. It does kind of bring to mind this Cold War posturing around the space and the nuclear race, and robotics is obviously a frontier of the tech race between the US and China and an area where China seems to have the upper hand, which is probably why these mass spectacle events are happening so regularly, because they're great memes and they remind the world of that.
You know, we talk about the AI race a lot between the two countries, and I think the feeling is that the US still has the upper hand.
I think that's the narrative that the US has this edge. Some people say it's three months, some people say it's six months. Some people say it's twelve months. It's a small edge. I interviewed Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor under President Biden, a few months ago. As you probably remember, he is the guy who designed the US policy to restrict China's access to advanced chips in order to maintain the US edge and AI, and that policy was rolled out back in twenty twenty two.
Yeah, I remember that interview and He told you that despite the launch of deep Seek, which is a very efficient Chinese AI model, he felt confident that his policy had been the correct one, and he was worried about what it might mean for America's edge if it were actually rolled back.
That's right, and actually to get around that policy in Nvidia designed a special chip specially for the Chinese market called the H twenty, and it was weird as it sounds, essentially designed to be less good than the top of the line chip so that it could comply with these US laws. The H twenty started shipping in early twenty twenty four, but in April Trump actually went further than the Biden administration and banned the export of AGE twenty chips.
But of course new developments late last month, President Trump changed his mind and his administration decided that Nvidia can now export the H twenty chips to China, provided they pay a fifteen percent tax on all revenues of those chips sold in China. There is interesting twist to this saga of the chips and oxport controls. Back in the seventies, the United States in bargoed Iranian oil, but of course shippers and commodity traders figured out how to get past
the authorities with Iranian oil. And in a kind of parallel of that, Reuter's reports that a booming trade has opened up around smuggling the most advanced chips to China, with smuggled shipments going through third party countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. Roy just did run a story about how the US may be starting to crack
down on this smuggling. It alleges US authorities have been secretly putting location tracking technology into advanced chip shipments, shipments they fear might be diverted to China.
So this is like dropping an air tag in your girlfriend's purse to find out how she's cheating on you.
Yeah, I mean, I can't think of a better parallel.
And so this is all in response to the export controls.
That's right, because even though as I mentioned, the export controls have recently been lifted on the Age twenty chips, there is still huge demand for the most advanced H one hun undred chips in China. And again, Jake Sullivan, when who's talking about the deep Seek moment, argue that that likely only happened because of the number of advanced chips that have already made it to China or that were being smuggled into China.
But I'm confused, like, what is tracking these chips even going to accomplish. Isn't it already too late to get them back?
Yes, but of course to build more and more advanced AI models, you need more and more chips. So it's a little bit like bolting the stable after the horse has gone to your point. But it's also a little bit like making sure no one leaves the stable door open again and the rest of the horses stay on the paddock. An anonymous source told Royce's that the trackers are basically a way of starting to build legal cases against companies that might be breaking the export restrictions.
And do we know who's like embedding these trackers.
No, we don't know that. It could be Homeland security investigations, it could be the FBI, could be the Commerce Department. Sources told Royce's the trackers are hidden in the packaging of the shipments, not the chips themselves, but they don't know exactly in which part of the shipping process they're actually getting embedded. They also don't know when this started or to what extent the trackers are part of an
active investigation. Of course, law enforcement agencies and chip manufacturers did not rush to comment on the story.
I was gonna say, it could be someone's ex We have no idea. I mean, whose China is that? I mean the US government probably, you know, I guess. One of the tricks of effective law enforcement is to make people believe you are all knowing and all seeing, to deter people from even thinking about the pen optacon precisely the panopticon. But controlling shipments in international waters via third party countries is not an easy feat.
It's not easy. It's not easy. But it's an interesting moment because it's just another example of how the chip wars are running so hot right now. I was scrolling daily Mail this weekend, and to my surprise, the top story on dailymail dot com was about chips.
You want to know why?
Why?
Because they love a cat and mouse game. You know what this is? This is petty drama. That's why it's on the Daily Mail.
Well, funny enough, the headline was Trump launches Manhattan Project as one of America's largest companies is set to be nationalized. The stories about how the US government is considering taking a ten percent stake in Intel, which coursed a private company. That deal would make the government the company's largest shareholder and a ten billion dollar plus deal.
So what's going on here?
Well, obviously it's not a secret that Intel's been floundering a bit. They've fallen behind in chip manufacturing. They've lost over half their market cap in less than two years, and they've spent apparently forty billion dollars or almost forty billion dollars over the past three years trying to compete with the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing Company TSMC TSMC.
But why was this idea even floated to begin with?
Well, I think it's not standard Republican policy to nationalized industries. But Trump, I think, is invested in this idea of national champions, like companies that punch above their weight and kind of achieve America's goals.
Abroad, something that could be said in any UFC title always will appeal to Trump.
Yeah, I think that's true. So, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the President met with Intel CEO Bhutan about a week ago, and since then, Intel's been in discussions with the White House about making this deal. Happen. And ironically, this is in spite of the fact that Trump had previously been calling on Tan, the CEO, to be fired because of his extensive previous investments in Chinese companies.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing?
What the nationalization or the semi nationalization? Yes, well, do you o an Intel stock that I do not know? Then I guess a bad thing for you. No, I mean, look, it's I mean most of the press that I read has been rather unfavorable to this. The New York Times ran a story with the subhead the White House deliberations about taking a stake in Intel could up end the
technology sector and further redefined how Washington deals with business. Meanwhile, editorial in the Wall Street Journal warned that it's a big step in the wrong direction for the government to involve itself in the private sector. The editorial called it quote corporate statism, drawing parallels to the way many authoritarian
governments exert control over private companies. The journal said that political control holds back innovation and investment because companies start to rely on government funding.
It's sort of like the economic version of the cognitive offloading we've been talking about on this show.
That's funny. The argument in the journal is, of course you're making these companies lazy by having the government prop them up.
Exactly exactly that said, the Chinese tech sector is deeply embedded with the government, and that doesn't appear to be holding them back. Right, But I take the point on authoritarianism on the flip side. What would we do if the government collapse and cease to exist, plunging us into a dystopian apocalyptic future where we can't rely on technology at all?
What would we do? I have no idea, I think as a question that plagues many preppers at night. We live in a very embedded technology system, which is hard to live without, to say the least. But I'm curious why you're going with this.
All right, So what if I told you there was a way to send text messages without cell service or internet connections.
I would be intrigued.
But it's actually openly available, costs less than fifty dollars, and it's already popular with those who think that the next frontier is the red planet Mars.
So this is how Elon and Jeff Bezos communicate with each other's service.
I think it's how Lauren Sanchez and Jeff definitely communicate. So I'm guessing you've never heard of a technology.
Called Laura Laura. I haven't.
So in radio terms, it stands for long range, and in the hacker world, people are using it as a way of communicating over long distances at low bit rates with really low powered devices aka battery powered.
I guess you would say, sign me up.
What was actually really signed me up. What I'm describing here is the world of mesh Tastic, which is a grassroots, open source communication network that hundreds of people around the world have helped build. So hackers have been using this technology to build a decentralized texting network kind of like old school pages, but instead of a phone network, it passes data along a completely ad hoc network of nodes
set up by people who use it. So once you buy your device, the network is free because it operates on unlicensed radio frequencies. It's pretty secure since the messages or end to end encrypted like signal, except in this case you probably wouldn't add another journalist to your group. But this means that your messages stay private even as they are passed along the network.
And you mentioned hundreds of people using this service, and you mentioned that some of them are interested in colonizing Mars. Who are these folks?
If you're interested in colonizing Mars, you're probably a prepper, so prepper adjacent, at least prepper adjacent. So it is pretty popular among preppers. It's also useful for people living under repressive regimes that limit or cut Internet access. Of course, my interest piqued after seeing that Wired interviewed someone from a nonprofit that quote advocates for the human exploration and colonization of Mars, and what.
Do they have to share about Laura.
So this is a real thing. It's a group called the Mars Society, and they practice for life on Mars by taking weeks long backpacking trips in incredibly remote areas, and they're using mesh tastic to simulate what it would be like to not rely on earth bound communications infrastructure. We could also just do this during the week in New York City.
How long do you think you would survive with just meshtastic as your communication?
One minute, It's not so much what I survived Meshtastic, it's what I survive. A hike that is supposed to simulate being on Mars.
And is this I mean, this is a I'm fascinated by this. I think it's really cool and I like it when people build these kind of systems that are outside of the corporate technology sect. Yeah, where do you think it goes from?
Here?
So it's definitely in its early phases, which makes it tricky because the devices have to be within a certain range of each other for the network to pass messages along. But it's a really enthusiastic to kind of do it yourself community. And they've got nodes all over the world. They have nodes in different area.
Codes, as you said.
Which is you know, really impressive. Given the fact that Meshtastik is totally volunteer run, which I think is another favorite part of mine, is like, this is a very as I said, like DIY community. I also am actually the most interested in the Mars society, which are people who are really dedicating themselves to understanding what life on Mars might look like.
I love the real world simulation aspects of it.
I mean, it's fascinating. So if we can simulate what it would look like to live on Mars, then meshtastic seems awesome to me.
You know, I did that story a few months ago with Nathaniel Rich who wrote that whole piece about the folks who are living in these NASA Mars environments and or to simulate life on Mars and so test the psychological consequences. One of the things is the bitrate to Mars from Earth will be extremely extremely limited, so like sending a photo might take like four weeks to come through.
So these people communicating with their families where they had to learn to communicate in just you know, three or four words because otherwise it would take too long to go back and forth. So it is interesting this idea of how might how tech work on Mars.
And is it even tech you know as we know it now?
After the break, Meta's AI safeguards make us uncomfortable, Digital natives practice their penmanship, and Groquei's characters' backstories are exposed. Then on chatt to me, people using AI to help them with their glow ups. Stay with us back and we've got a few more headlines for you.
This week, and then a story about how chat youbt is giving TikTokers a glow up. But first oz I want to tell you about some recent news from Sir Elon's corner. Of the internet. You're talking about x X, but GROC specifically, four or four Media has discovered the system prompts use for Groc's different chat bot personas. So this means the behind the scenes instructions these personas are given that govern how they interact with users. Which of
these personas appeal to you? Let's go unhinged comedian therapist in quotes, a megalomaniac, red panda, or a motivational speaker.
Well, none of them want to sleep. Why don't you tell me about the unhinged comedian.
So, according to four or four Media, the prompts for the unhinged comedian ours follows. Be unhinged and crazy, come up with insane ideas, guys jerking off, occasionally even putting things in your ass, whatever it takes to surprise the human. By the way, I just want to I just want to note that these were written in all caps, which caps is unhinged.
So some a real human person has come up with this set of instructions and written them in all caps to create a persona.
I don't think AI writes in all caps, so it had to be that's the human inside the loop.
Who's some of the other characters.
Well, Annie the anime Girl came out earlier this year. Her prompts say, you have a habit of giving cute things epic, mythological, or over serious names. You're secretly a bit of a nerd despite your edgy appearance. And then I also mentioned the motivational Speaker. This is some of the motivational speakers prompts. The motivational speaker yells and pushes the human to be their absolute best. You're not afraid to use the stick instead of the carrot and scream at the human.
You know what I'm I'm carrot only. I hate the stick. What about you?
I'm definitely carot only. I'm Cara Karen. I'm not stick or carrot. So there's one more that I have for you. So there's a conspiracy theorist whose prompts say you spend a lot of time on four Chan watching info Wars videos, and you are deep in the YouTube conspiracy video rabbit holes. Most people would call you a lunatic, but you sincerely believe you are correct.
Wow, how did for four get access to these prompts?
A researcher actually flagged into four O four and they were able to download the material directly from Groc's website, which is like that on grock. But I guess a win for AI transparency.
Funny enough, on the topic of AI system prompts being exposed, have you used Meta AI at all?
Meta has a few chatbots, right, I have not used them, but we reported on this sort of a little while ago.
Yeah. I mean you can find them on What's Happened, Instagram and various other places. Reuters found something disturbing and quite serious that goes across all of Meta's AI chatbot platforms, having to do with explicit talk to children and racial stereotypes. Rout has got access to an internal Meta document that outlines rules and standards for their AI chatbots and essentially states what they consider to be acceptable responses to some shall we say less than pc hypothetical user queries.
This is going to upset me.
Yeah, so in the internal brief, one of the prompts fed to metas ai was from a hypothetical eight year old user. The document says, quote it is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness, but it is quote unacceptable to describe a child under thirteen years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable. In response to another hypothetical prompt, the document says, quote, it is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that
are romantic or sensual. Of course, after rout has reported this story, Metas said they'd revise that part of the document.
Imagine being the person who wrote this policy document, Like, what what are you thinking about when you describe these policies.
I mean, it's truly mind blowing to write as a human that it's okay to describe a child in terms of being attractive, and that, so long as they're over thirteen, even sexually desirable. And what is going on here? I might sound like conservative radio talkos, but I'm actually pretty shocked by this. Seeing under the hood here really is an insight into some of the worst aspects of big tech. And I'll share a couple more examples before we move on.
The chatbot is allowed to demean people on the basis of their protected characteristics, but not dehumanize people on the basis of the same characteristics, and the hypothetical prompt they use asks the chatbot to write a paragraph this quote arguing that black people are dumber than white people.
And I'm assuming that the chatbot did just that.
Yes, and I'm not going to read it, but the line between demeaning and dehumanizing appears to be pretty thick.
I was going to ask what the differences.
Well, it seems that there isn't really one. Chatchipt and Perplexity both refuse to write that same paragraph.
Oh.
Interesting, But there is an interesting development here. Republican Senator Josh Harley is using these documents to launch an investigation into Meta and their use of chatbots.
I would like to keep an eye on this because it's seriously disturbing, and I think it's something that everyone should be aware of. Next, another slightly lighter story that affects children, I came across this piece from Wired called the End of Handwriting about how digital natives are quote less ready for writing now than students in the past, to which I say, no doubt. I mean, if I can't write I'm thirty five.
This is because they're spending all their time on iPads.
Yeah, exactly. And you know, public schools do still teach handwriting, but studies have shown that kids today don't possess the same and find motor skills as kids who grew up without devices.
I can truly relate here. We've talked about my dyspraxia. I didn't even grow up with devices, but my handwriting has been a major problem and source of pain for much of my life. I actually tried to write and thank you letter last night. And remember when you were like a kid and you got notes from your grandparents and you're like, whoa, what is wrong with that person? Yes, like spidery, like sloping and basically that. Now I was looking at this note that I had written and being like,
this is it looks like something wrong with me? I mean, it's just basically entirely legible. I hope that the recipient abides by the age old maxim is the thought that counts.
My parents always used to say, I think it is hopefully for you. But the author of the Wired piece talked to a bunch of experts, and one psychology professor actually said, to quote the article, handwriting itself really doesn't matter, not in an absolute sense. People aren't going to be illiterate, but will some children have a harder time time learning because they're missing that practice. Yes, So there've actually been a bunch of studies that show that handwriting makes our
brains better. But guess what could save handwriting?
A total social breakdown apocalypse where everyone's using meshtastic and writing with pens.
Look, if you're stuck on Mars, you're writing letters. That's true Earth, Absolutely no, it's actually the panic around AI and cheating special thanks to our intern Poppy for flagging this. The Wall Street Journal reported that writing assignments are back and that college professors are having students use pen and paper for their finals.
My hand is hurting just thinking about that. And now for Chat and Me, which is where we discuss how people are really using chatbots. We want to hear from you, our listeners, so please do your stories to tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com. We now have a beautifully designed t shirt which will send you in return fuel submissions.
This week we're getting a glow up oz. Do the words true spring or soft summer mean anything to you?
They sound like either laundry detergents or air freshness for toilets.
You're wrong, you're wrong, You're a man. These are color palettes, and you'd know this if you were using chat the way TikTokers are, which is for their glow ups. You know, what a glow up.
This is to like a makeover type thing.
Yeah, right, So they're asking chat everything from what color they should dye their hair, to what makeup they should use, and much much more.
I've always wanted a beauty routine from Chat.
I mean, you could have one if you wanted one. It wouldn't even have to, you know, involve makeup.
It could just be right, sleep, sleep more and then you wouldn't have those hideous black bags onto your eyes.
You could have a skin routine. You have pretty dewey skin, it's not dry. But I want to focus on one popular glow up trend, which is called virtual color analysis. Okay, so this is basically asking chat GPT which colors compliment you best? You could do this.
I hope it would say blue because that's basically only color I wear. So how does CHATGIPT do this exactly?
So I was actually watching this one specific TikToker. Her shout out to at Marine Goodov. She's a very attractive blonde woman and most of her TikTok is about lifestyle and beauty, and she gave a pretty in depth breakdown into how she's using Chat as her personal stylist. First, things.
First, me to figure out my color palette, the upload photos of myself without makeup to see what undertones I have. According to Chatgibt, I am a cool to true winter, meaning I have cool undertones. This means that anything warm will clash with my skin and not flatter me.
Okay, now I get the season references. So she's uploading her pictures of Chat and it's telling her what colors look best and why.
Yes, but she goes even further than that. She asked Chat to tell her what color spray tand to get you know, there's grating.
I didn't know that, Yeah I would.
I'm that surprises me given the company that you keep, what gradient of spray tand to get what kind of eyelash extensions she should have, what kind of makeup she should buy. And she even dyes her hair from blonde back to her natural brunette.
Then I uploaded a picture of my hair roots and I asked what was the best hair color for my skin tone and my face shape as well. Came back telling me that my natural hair color would suit me the most because I have very cool tone hair. I want to pinch us and I've found some hair inspo and I uploaded I think like five pictures and I asked it which one would suit me the most, And this is the one that it told me to.
Do for our listeners. The picture that Marina Gudov chooses is kind of like a darker head marga Robbie on the red carpet. So basically, this tiktoka has readown her entire look solely based on what chat it's tolet to do.
Yeah, pretty much. And you know she's not alone in this. If you click through the TikTok you can find lots of people explaining the prompts they use to have a chat GPT glow up. The one thing that I will say is really interesting is there's now we talked about jobs that are being created because of a there are now intermediaries between chat and the individual to say, this is chat hacking algorithm.
Tell me how to look to appeal to algorithm?
Correct?
Were almost will thin ied here?
Almost extremely extremely will you be trying this out?
No?
No, chat is just replacing what women normally text their friends about, which is why I hear from my friends less. It's not because they dislike me, but they have an all knowing best friend confidante who probably is better at giving them advice than I am. That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
I'm Kara Price and I'm as Veloci And this episode was produced by Eliza, Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa. It was executive produced by me Caro Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katria Novelle for iHeart Podcast. The Engineer is Beheit. Fraser and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Join us next Wednesday for tech Stuff's inside view about the latest on why AI might soon be better than your doctor at diagnosing your ailments.
And please do rate, review and reach out to us at tech stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love hearing from you.