More, Everything, Forever With Adam Becker

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about introspection-free venture capital, the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse effect of LLMs, and trying to find a better future to focus on. https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/ Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today! --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 2:54Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 3:10Ed Zitron?

  As ever, go to the episode notes to sign up to the newsletter. Please do the Premium, it'll make me money. Buy a fuck data centers T shirt or join one of the assorted communities if you ever want to fall further into the larger Zitron verse. But today we're joined by the author of more everything forever. That's right, journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker. Adam, how are you doing?

• 3:27Speaker 06

  I'm doing well, Ed. How are you?

• 3:30Ed Zitron?

  Got a new podcast, don't you?

• 3:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I do. It's called Dreaming Against the Machine and it just came out pretty recently.

• 3:36Ed Zitron?

  What's about?

• 3:37Speaker 06

  Uh, well, it's, uh, it's like a more optimistic version of this podcast.

• 3:42Ed Zitron?

  Okay, no, I like that. I like this. I want to hear about that. Tell me.

• 3:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, uh, you know, I spent a lot of time when I was writing my book, More Everything Forever, thinking about terrible people and their bad ideas about the future. And that made me want to think more about good ideas about the future and people who I actually like. And so the podcast is about, you know, trying to imagine what a realistic, good future could look like.

• 4:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Can you give me some examples?

• 4:15Speaker 06

  Oh, no, I have no idea.

• 4:18Ed Zitron?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:18Ed Zitron?

  You're still working that one out.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, still figuring that out. I mean, that's, that's sort of the podcast is me thinking out loud about these things with different guests each week. Uh, so, yeah, I mean, uh, it's certainly a future where we found a way to wrench power away from these tech billionaires. Uh, and it's not a future that involves like, you know, space colonization and super intelligent A I. Uh, but, uh, more than that, I'm still figuring that out. That's, that's what the podcast is for.

• 4:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I do get a good amount of people who email and are like, yeah, well, why don't you do you talk about more positive things on the show? A, it's tough to find them, but B also, sometimes when I do it, people get mad at me.

• 5:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, but Ed, I don't think that you-

• 5:12Ed Zitron?

  Mr. Shill.

• 5:14Speaker 06

  I don't think you mind people being mad at you, Ed.

• 5:18Ed Zitron?

  I, yeah, I don't, but at the same time, it's like when I'm, I mentioned this Nebula X1 projector thing I really like, it's quite expensive. It's like this insane thing in like a box as a projector. It's like got the speakers you could plug in there, wireless and it's beautiful. It works really well. I talked about that once and I had people email me saying, Ed, you're a shill. You're being a shill. You can't. And it's like, oh my Christ, do I have to hate everything? Cause there's plenty I do. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. I feel like you get plenty.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:49Ed Zitron?

  But I feel like there are some really good things. Like, I feel like if America was not under the gastocracy right now, we would be in a kind of golden era of solar. Like I have solar in my house in Vegas and I barely pay an electricity bill. It's kind of magic. It's kind of amazing.

• 6:06Speaker 06

  Yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, there's, there's a lot of great technology and solar is a really good example. Like the solar technology has gotten really great. Battery technology has gotten really great. I think that these are wonderful things. And yeah, if we weren't subsidizing fossil fuels and actually thinking clearly about both what is the, you know, the cheapest and most effective sources of energy and what would be best for the climate and the planet. You know, I think it would be pretty clear that, that we'd be going through an even faster energy transition than we are already.

• 6:43Ed Zitron?

  Wouldn't energy also be cheaper if we were to mass solar? I'm sure someone's gonna hate me for saying that.

• 6:47Speaker 06

  I think that's true. Um, you know, I'd have to look at the numbers, but I mean, I, solar is, I believe, the cheapest source of energy at the moment. Um, has been for a bit.

• 6:57Ed Zitron?

  But what if instead we could just have natural gas everywhere, which is very cheap? I'm hearing at the moment.

• 7:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean.

• 7:05Ed Zitron?

  There's lots of it. Nothing's happened to the supply.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 7:07Ed Zitron?

  Everyone's fine.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, everything's fine. Nothing is broken and uh

• 7:11Ed Zitron?

  Normal.

• 7:11Speaker 06

  We're getting really tired of winning.

• 7:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Talking of thinking though, we're talking beyond, just, just before we got on like, one of the most insane things I think I have heard a tech CEO say, and I say this as someone who's heard Alex Karp speak before, Marc Andreessen saying he doesn't have introspection.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  Yes, this was kind of my favorite thing that's happened recently, uh, you know.

• 7:35Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 06

  For, for values of favorite where I mean like horrible and unhinged. But yeah, no, he, he said that he doesn't introspect and that introspection was invented in Vienna 100 years ago by Sigmund Freud. And like, okay, what do you think that, I don't know, Hamlet was about?

• 7:59Speaker 06

  What do you?

• 8:01Ed Zitron?

  All right. Uh, what was Hamlet about? Hamlet was about, oh, guy who cried a lot when his life was awesome. Same with Macbeth, same deal.

• 8:11Speaker 06

  Exactly. Like what, what does he think?

• 8:13Ed Zitron?

  Midsummer Night's Dream, drugs.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  But like, what does he think any?

• 8:17Ed Zitron?

  Just ruining Shakespeare live on air.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Like all art, like any, any, any form of art pretty much ever created by anyone at any point in history. Like, why does he believe this? I think, you know, it does seem like Marc Andreessen doesn't think, he doesn't, he doesn't introspect. But um.

• 8:41Ed Zitron?

  What's going on in that magical brain all the time?

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Uh, that magical brain, the egg-like brain that he has.

• 8:47Ed Zitron?

  The fuck it, like the Dr. Robotnik.

• 8:50Speaker 06

  Yes. Yeah.

• 8:52Ed Zitron?

  It, it's so funny as well because, oh, I'm constantly introspective to the point where I'm like tearing up my own theories and things that I've done.

• 8:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:00Ed Zitron?

  Thought about again and again and again. It's one of the enjoyable things about being human.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 9:05Ed Zitron?

  Is one's ability to reflect.

• 9:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:08Ed Zitron?

  That's kind of makes sense when you look at all the AI stuff though.

• 9:11Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I think that. For someone like Andreessen, he's gotten so wealthy and so powerful, he's not used to hearing no. And introspection from that perspective is just an opportunity to tell yourself no. And why would he ever do that to himself? But, um, you know, LLMs definitely never introspect. They're not really capable of it. Uh, yeah. And, you know, we, uh, we've got this chain of reasoning stuff that's supposedly like introspection, but it's not. And I think that if you don't introspect, that's gonna make it so much easier to be fooled into thinking that these things are thinking.

• 9:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And also, I like the chain of thought reasoning because if you think that's what thinking's like, you must not think so hard. Yeah. Because it's just, what is thinking? Well, every time I hear literally anything, I think, what would they, what do they mean by that? What am I, it's like every single thought you have is a Tucker Carlson monologue?

• 10:13Ed Zitron?

  What do they mean? What is that? Yes. What do you mean? How's my day? How's my day today? It's the afternoon. Is it like, is it just the daytime? Do I care about nighttime now? Does this person care about me? Do they care about my family? What's going on here? Just like in this constant state of like confusion. Yeah. And then using way too much, way too much energy to just go, yes, fine. Yeah. It's, it's fine. I'm the more, I'm all right, you know, yeah, keep yourself busy. It's just, what I don't get is what I mean, I take that back. Yeah, I actually totally get this. But if you're that rich, you have so much more time to do so many more interesting things and think about them, for example.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:53Ed Zitron?

  You know, just like a book or like a song or at that price, at the amount of money that he has, he could just be like, I wouldn't mind seeing, I don't know, um, Public Enemy. I bet I could just call all of them and pay them all to just do a concert in my living room. Don't think Marc Andreessen is a big Public Enemy fan, but just for the sake of example.

• 11:15Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah.

• 11:17Ed Zitron?

  And it it's very, it it gets me back to this thought I've had this whole time with the LLM era, where it's like, this is just the digital dunce cap era. This is when we find out all the people who just have not been thinking the entire time, who just all they all they've been doing is just walk around going like money, money, money, growth, is it like Facebook, does it like, hey, reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg, give him a million dollars. Wait, he needs $10 million, give him 20, just in case someone else gives him 10.

• 11:47Ed Zitron?

  Just constant state of like angry anxiety.

• 11:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, God, what was it? I saw this um, this LLM startup advertising somewhere online that was saying that they were, you know, going to do your intellectual labor for you and they were going to do your homework for you and stuff like that in school. And I'm like, do you know what intellectual labor is? Saying that you're going to do it for me, because they were saying then you just get to reap the benefits of the intellectual labor. And I'm like, okay, saying that you're going to do it for me and then I get to reap the benefits is sort of like saying you have a robot that's going to do pull ups badly. And if I just watch it do pull ups badly, then I will somehow get stronger. Like, that's just not how it works.

• 12:35Speaker 06

  That's not how thinking works.

• 12:37Ed Zitron?

  Well, it kind of reminds me, I saw this Andre Carpath, you remember Andre, Andre Carpathi, he's the co-founder, one of the many co-founders of OpenAI.

• 12:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:45Ed Zitron?

  And he he posted this thing the other day, he was like, yeah, I was spending hours working on like a private wiki for all of his research, not his research project, but stuff he was like looking into strongly. And it's like, and it's like, yeah, and then you can use an LLM to ask it questions. It's like, why?

• 13:06Ed Zitron?

  Like, just, just why?

• 13:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:07Ed Zitron?

  Like, I would get it if he was like, to be clear, if he was saying, I as a scientist, I'm collecting tons of data and I want to have it in a place I can poke at it. Fine. It didn't seem, he was suggesting this very much like just research into stuff he was looking at on like his personal knowledge base. It's like, what is going on in your brain, mate? What are you thinking about all day? You're just like, oh, wouldn't it be great if all these thoughts I was having were in a wiki format in Obsidian?

• 13:37Speaker 06

  I mean,

• 13:37Ed Zitron?

  Oh, Christ.

• 13:38Speaker 06

  Also, the whole point of a wiki is that anyone can edit it. Why does he want anyone to be able to edit something that he's using?

• 13:44Ed Zitron?

  Well, it's not anyone, it's just him.

• 13:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:46Ed Zitron?

  It's just him. It's just his wiki.

• 13:48Speaker 06

  Right, but that's just, but that's just a document. That's just like a Word document. That's, I don't understand.

• 13:55Ed Zitron?

  No, I don't either. And like, I, there was a guy underneath there who, this is gonna be in a newsletter I'm working on today that will actually be out before this, whatever.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:03Ed Zitron?

  Um, and there was a guy below beneath who said, yeah, I'm doing a less professional version of this using OpenClaw. It's like, to catalog what great thoughts exactly that's? What, what grand missives from the depths of the brain minds do you fuckwits have going on? Because every time I see, my new game is to, anytime I see someone just being like, I, I, I'm, I'm running 11 agents concurrently and they're doing this and that. I try and find what it is they're working on. I've never been able to.

• 14:38Ed Zitron?

  Never. There are images of like, there's like a photo of them with like 19 terminal windows, the CC usage saying they spent $2,500 and a $100 a month subscription. But you can never just like, look at them. You'll have to be like, oh, wow, you, you're cooking.

• 14:55Speaker 06

  They don't know what they're working on half the time, right? They've got one of those processes is like an agent where they asked it, oh, come up with ideas. Right?

• 15:03Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, come up with ideas, work on an interface, an interface series to observe in Figma and then have another, have another agent look at that and say, this is the one. And then at the end, something will happen.

• 15:17Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, can we, can we just pause for a second? The fact that there's something called Figma, like, it's just a Ligma joke. I don't understand.

• 15:25Ed Zitron?

  It is.

• 15:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, how did they do this?

• 15:27Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but Figma's kind of use, like, Figma's like,

• 15:30Speaker 06

  Sure, no, absolutely. I'm not, I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm just saying the name, the name is a problem.

• 15:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, having to walk around saying Figma.

• 15:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:38Ed Zitron?

  It's kind of like having to say Hadoop.

• 15:41Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 15:41Ed Zitron?

  Hadoop or Superbase.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:44Ed Zitron?

  Versal's fine, but like, there are a lot of, even Anthropic is a stupid name. I don't, I like, I think we need to return to an era where, where we only let Taiwan name our companies.

• 15:58Ed Zitron?

  Because look, you got Honhai Precision Limited. Now, there's a company name. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.

• 16:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a good name.

• 16:05Ed Zitron?

  I know exactly what they do.

• 16:06Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 16:07Ed Zitron?

  I know, I do nothing fancy, don't need to. You got Quanta. I assume that's something to do with one of their founders. Maybe they named it. If you named it before the eighties, it's fine. But like, no more startup names. You can't do dot Lee and anything. Figba, nope. Call it like, I don't know, Art Corporation dot biz. Like, I don't care. Just make this easier on me. But nevertheless, it's, I, we were all stuck about this before. And there is another theory that I'm growing with LLM as well, which is, and I'm specifically leading to the journalists using AI one.

• 16:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:41Ed Zitron?

  It kind of feels like all of these agentic quote unquote processes are taking up more energy than just doing them normally.

• 16:48Speaker 06

  Yep. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

• 16:50Ed Zitron?

  Way more.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, because like, you know, all of this just feels like people trying to avoid the hard work of having to think, right? Especially if you're looking at people using this instead, you know, as a way of writing. The old saw is that writing is thinking. And I also think, you know, I mean, another old saw is that writing is rewriting, right? And so when people say, oh, I'm just using it for editing. And like, that's part of the writing process. If you're using it for editing, you're using it for writing. And that's like, that's not good.

• 17:30Speaker 06

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• 18:57Ed Zitron?

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• 19:41Ed Zitron?

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• 19:58Speaker 02

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• 20:32Ed Zitron?

  This Wired piece was particularly bizarre, like, I don't need to think about Kevin Roos too much, I don't think he, he certainly doesn't, and I won't, but Alex Heath, Alex is weird, Alex is a weird one because he's been around tech journalism for 15 something years, doesn't seem like a terrible bloke, but he describes this process of writing his newsletter, let's see, where he's, where he claims he, he feels like he is cheating. And he, and I quote Max Z, the reporter of Wired, "He sat down with me last week to showcase how he's integrated Anthropic's Claude code work, cowork even, into his journalistic process. The AI tool is connected to his Gmail, Google Calendar, granola AI transcription

• 21:16Ed Zitron?

  service and Notion notes. He also built a detailed skill, a custom set of instructions, it's a text file, to help Claude write in his style, including the 10 commandments of writing like Alex Heath. The skill includes previous articles he's written, instructions on how he likes his newsletters to be structured, and notes on his own voice and writing style. Then Claude cowork then automates the drafting process that used to take place in his head, to your point, you were completely correct."

• 21:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:39Ed Zitron?

  "After the agent finishes its draft, Heath goes back and forth with it for up to 30 minutes suggesting revisions. It's quite an involved process and he still writes some parts of the story himself. But Heath says the workflow saves him hours every week and that he now spends 30, 40% less time writing." Yeah, mate, how much time do you spend prompting?

• 21:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and also 30 to 40%, even if that's accurate, 30 to 40% less time in order to produce something that's writing in the smeared out voice of the internet, and yes, you're trying to get it to write more like you, but come on. And, and also, you know, I, I just, I don't understand why they would be willing to relinquish

• 22:22Speaker 06

  Not just the the process, but also the sort of like intellectual ownership. I don't mean like, you know, in the in the like intellectual property sense, but like

• 22:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like the I wrote this.

• 22:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. And and and like the the way that you know something when you wrote it that you you can't know, even if you were there for the editing like I know. I mean, I, you know, I'm I'm getting older as we all do until we die. And as I get older, my memory is, you know, not as good as it used to be. I think it's still pretty good, but you know.

• 22:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  I I have trouble remembering all sorts of things that I didn't used to have trouble remembering. But I know the stuff that I've written inside and out because I was in there, you know, in the trenches with it, writing it.

• 23:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 06

  And and so I know it, you know, chapter and verse. Why would you give up having that kind of knowledge of your own work and your own thinking?

• 23:23Ed Zitron?

  Well, that's the thing that for me with my writing as well. It's not just like the writing and the reading, all that. It's I will be writing something and I will think, and in my case, it would be like, didn't the information mention in June 2024, the OpenAI's annualized revenue? Like, I will go through an insane chain of events in my brain, but it's because of my interaction with the work that I remember that stuff.

• 23:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:44Ed Zitron?

  It isn't just.

• 23:45Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 23:45Ed Zitron?

  And then I linked to thingy and then think it was way. That that reminds me of something I was working on in 2024, 2025. And I'm not sure that.

• 23:58Ed Zitron?

  I'm not sure that these people have had that joy of an experience.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:02Ed Zitron?

  I don't even mean this condescendingly. I just mean there is a certain joy to being like, wait, I remember this and digging something out that you painstakingly read and probably didn't even use at the time.

• 24:15Speaker 06

  Yep. Yeah, no, that's exactly.

• 24:17Ed Zitron?

  And it it sucks. And also, it seems like more work.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  Yes, I agree.

• 24:21Ed Zitron?

  This this seems like way more work to me like I am OK. I connect all of these things and I make sure they work. And I've written a long text document. Also, he says that it's got all of his old articles in it. Wouldn't that fill up that context window? Anyway.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:37Ed Zitron?

  Putting all that technical stuff aside.

• 24:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I just.

• 24:40Ed Zitron?

  Um.

• 24:41Speaker 06

  I don't understand.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  Because like, if you don't write it, then you're not thinking your way through it. And like, yeah, okay, I go into writing something and I have sort of an idea of what it's going to be. But it's as I write it that I realize what I actually think about these things. And I get to a spot in the writing where I'm stuck and I realize, oh, I'm stuck. Because there was something that I thought I understood or two ideas that I thought were connected. Now I'm realizing the connection is, is less clear or my understanding is less good than I thought it was. And so I have to sit down and work it out, or I have to go check an idea that I realized I was taking for granted. And maybe it wasn't true. And like, and then this stuff is out there in the world with my name on it.

• 25:26Speaker 06

  And I just can't imagine having something out in the world with my name on it that I wasn't, you know, dead sure of and felt that I had thought my own way through on. Otherwise I'd die of shame.

• 25:41Ed Zitron?

  I, same. Yeah. Like I fuck stuff up. I, I make typos. People love to email me about them.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:47Ed Zitron?

  And it, they sure do more than they say nice things in fact. But it's, it's the beauty of that, beauty of that fuck up that makes it mine.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:57Ed Zitron?

  But on top of that, yeah, though I, you have said this and Cal Newport recently said it as well, where it's, people are scared of thinking.

• 26:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:05Ed Zitron?

  And I extend that to, and Cal also said concentration.

• 26:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:10Ed Zitron?

  I extend it to friction. I think that that moment you just described when you're like, wait, what does, what does that mean? What does that mean? Wait, what do you, well, no, wait, I don't get that.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:20Ed Zitron?

  That moment is deeply uncomfortable. That is introspection.

• 26:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:23Ed Zitron?

  Like, and it sucks. And when you don't, like I spent a lot of last night learning about the Japanese economy. Cause me curious little critter and it does tie into things in worrying ways. But, and there were moments where I'm like, great, okay. Oh, the Plaza Record, what's that? Oh Christ, I have to learn another thing. Oh, what's the, oh, there's some sort of dilemma. Oh, Japanese economy stuff. And there were constant points from like, what this is, why am I fucking stupid? Why don't I understand this? But that's how you get smart. That's how you learn thing. And you, I don't see how you do that, having an LLM burp stuff up for you, even if it's based on things you have said.

• 27:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. Um, yeah.

• 27:06Ed Zitron?

  Also, if it's just reading stuff you've written before, is that, like, at some point, it's gonna stop being you entirely, because it's just, eventually, it's just gonna be more AI than person.

• 27:21Ed Zitron?

  Very weird.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Yeah. No, I, I completely agree. And, and you're also, I mean, this to me is bringing me back to something that I said, I think, the first time I was on your podcast, which is, uh, that in a way, this is taking the sort of billionaire experience and making it, uh, like the billionaire cognitive experience and making it available for everyone, because billionaires never have to do anything uncomfortable, like think.

• 27:50Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  Uh, I mean, it, it's also reminding me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which I just found and I'm gonna read it to you. Um, being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost $20,000 and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment, it's probably, it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day.

• 28:20Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I think I'd be fine, but yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:24Ed Zitron?

  I mean, I would be good. I think a billion dollars, I'd be just fine. I, feels like a skill issue to me. I-

• 28:31Speaker 06

  Oh, it's definitely a skill issue, although you're also reminding me of the, uh, of, you know, that, uh, the Arrested Development meme of like, no, it never works for anyone else, but it just might work for us.

• 28:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, people fool themselves into thinking this would work for them.

• 28:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:45Ed Zitron?

  I, and I also think that there is a busy box mentality to it as well. When you start using these things and it's very clear from the moment you start using them, that they will not just do anything on their own. You can't just be like, do this.

• 29:00Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 29:01Ed Zitron?

  Like, just, just check this out. What do you like? Will you do this? And it spits it out. Lots of stories about things being one-shotted, but very few actual examples that matter to me.

• 29:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:11Ed Zitron?

  Or really anyone I talk to. It's like, oh, it fixed one problem, but you can't just say, do this entire task.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:16Ed Zitron?

  So, once you've done that, I don't know, my reaction to that is always, the fuck is this? I don't, I'm, I don't log on to a website, have it break and then go, that's okay. I use another website. But I think that there is something about the experience that because it's so convoluted and you have to contrive all of these little do-hickies, like fucking Pee-wee Herman making breakfast. Yet, when you get to the end of it, you're like, wow, I'm so smart. I made the, I made it do this, but also I'm going to give it credit for the thing that I ended up doing most of the work on, if I'm honest.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  Right. I mean, but this is also, this is part of why I think the people who are most convinced that this is going to take over every job and one-shot everything,

• 30:10Speaker 06

  are so often software engineers, because yeah, okay, this thing is changing the way that people code and does seem to be able to, you know, write some code for some people, but, you know, that's a limited human task, right? And, and even for people whose job is, you know, to be a software engineer, the actual writing of code is, is just one part of, of what the job is. And the thing that's, I think that the trap that these people fall into a lot of the time is they believe that their job, software engineering, writing code, is like the, the ultimate

• 30:51Speaker 06

  human intellectual achievement. And so if you have something that can do that, it must be able to do anything. And that's just not true.

• 31:03Ed Zitron?

  And it can also, it can do that, kind of.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:07Ed Zitron?

  Like, it's like, it can write code.

• 31:09Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 31:10Ed Zitron?

  But no one also can seem to explain what that means in the end, because all these companies, it does sound like you've got companies where you've got a bunch of people just not writing any code.

• 31:21Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 31:23Ed Zitron?

  And I hate to ask, now what? Like really, they're not firing anyone. Largely across the entire software stack, things seem to be getting worse. So

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:36Ed Zitron?

  Good.

• 31:37Speaker 06

  I mean, it's like, yeah, I mean, Anthropic's Claude code, you know, code base dropped. And they're like, yeah, we wrote Claude code with Claude code. And then there were a bunch of coders in there saying, yeah, I can tell that you did.

• 31:50Ed Zitron?

  I also love that we're meant to be scared of Claude mythos, this thing that can find this obvious marketing trick.

• 31:57Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:58Ed Zitron?

  That can find any number, it can find every vulnerability at everything.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  And that's

• 32:03Ed Zitron?

  Other than the fact it required human, human people to actually find the vulnerabilities and coaching.

• 32:09Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 32:10Ed Zitron?

  And indeed, like one of the main, but one of the main exploits for BSD was not actually exploitable. You could just make it crash like, and regardless.

• 32:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:18Ed Zitron?

  But they couldn't find

• 32:21Ed Zitron?

  the vulnerabilities in their own software.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I, I'm sure, like, I'm very willing to believe that it's a helpful tool for finding certain kinds of vulnerabilities. But you're completely right. This is a marketing gimmick. Come on.

• 32:39Ed Zitron?

  It is. And it's also, I'm kind of honestly, a little bit scared of how well it worked on people.

• 32:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:47Ed Zitron?

  Like, how many people just like, yeah, this is the scariest thing ever. Of course, I couldn't see it.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  It's because we've got this, this narrative that comes out of these, you know, AI cults like the rationalists that, that AI is going to take over the world and be able to, you know, make itself super intelligent and end humanity. Once it's able to write its own code. And all of that's just a sci-fi fantasy, but you know, it makes it very easy for Anthropic to do these sorts of marketing gimmicks or, oh man, I don't remember who it was who pointed this out, but someone, I saw someone online say, it's not just that it's a marketing gimmick. It's also that this is a way of sort of soft launching it as an enterprise only product that's not available to the general consumer.

• 33:33Ed Zitron?

  And you can, you can tell they're kind of toying with that idea too, but it's not really obvious what the plan is.

• 33:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:40Ed Zitron?

  Because the way they sell this shit is having 1 million different guys with an AI avatar on Twitter posting that this is what changes everything every time they do anything.

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:50Ed Zitron?

  Like, and I just, I've also been playing a fun game, which is called go and try and work out what these big integrations do. It's not a very, okay, when I say it's fun, I mean, it's exhausting because I went on the Goldman Sachs and Anthropic, they're automating accounting and compliance roles and, but don't worry, the firm is in the early stages of developing agents based on Anthropic's model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. What are those functions? Who the fuck knows? They don't say. They just don't say. They, they're like, they don't, because they probably don't have an answer. I wanna, I wanna see those contracts.

• 34:31Ed Zitron?

  I wanna see the actual outcomes, but it's, I mean, this is kind of a vague point to say, but I feel kind of insane that we're still talking about it on this level.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:39Ed Zitron?

  It's still, we're still talking about it like we're trying to establish whether the Sasquatch exists.

• 34:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I just, the, the amount of vibe based crap around all of this, like to, to me, I mean, because of my background as an astrophysicist, to me, like the, the number one thing that is clearly just vibes is this whole push for orbital data centers, which is just like the stupidest.

• 35:08Ed Zitron?

  I feel like we might have discussed this before, but it's like, isn't, isn't the amount of power they create, like, wouldn't they, isn't it an insane amount of power for like one megawatt? I haven't looked too deep into the tech yet.

• 35:21Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't remember how much they like, I don't remember how, like what the, what the numbers are for power generation, but I know that bleeding off heat is a serious problem. And so, because like,

• 35:36Speaker 06

  Space is a vacuum, vacuum is an insulator. And so even though it's cold, you can't actually get rid of the excess heat very well. And so you need these giant radiator veins that are bigger than the entire International Space Station, just for one data center. Yeah, and it's just not going to happen. And that's just one issue. You've got the radiation, you've got the fact that you can't upgrade the damn thing without doing a spacewalk. Like, what, what the hell are they thinking?

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• 39:17Ed Zitron?

  So I just looked it up real quick. Projects like Star Cloud aim for roughly 8 kilowatt of power in early prototypes.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  That's not enough.

• 39:26Ed Zitron?

  Well, just to give you some context, an MVL 72 of GB200, 72 GPUs is about 142 kilowatts.

• 39:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:35Ed Zitron?

  So that's probably not going to work.

• 39:38Speaker 06

  No.

• 39:39Ed Zitron?

  It, that's, but you know what? That's also insane. I read about that. I read a headline about that thing in the New York Times, read one in CNBC. It, it makes me think that if I was an evil person, like I had a top hat and like a little curly moustache of some sort, like I could just get so far just being like, yeah, you know, I used the model the other day and it actually is Willie alive. He's fully alive and it told me it's coming for your job specifically. And then just go on being verified and like give them the job be like, yeah, the AI bot came up with this mate. They're coming for your wife. I would be on the front page in the New York Times, terrifying message from British traveler.

• 40:22Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I would just claim I was from the future like that would be in the Kevin Roos would be immediately intrigued.

• 40:29Speaker 06

  It's funny. I was, I was about to say Kevin Roos would believe you. Yeah.

• 40:33Ed Zitron?

  No, I think, I think he would hit me with a bean can like Siler in Heroes, little reference for those listening. Remember Heroes from decades ago. But it's just, it's frustrating as well because even though you got the big blinking warning signs. And you especially like, you've really gone deep into how nutty these billionaires are and how distant the things they're saying are from reality. It is ours are still somewhat of a niche belief, which is strange still.

• 41:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 06

  I know, I know. It's like, we're the reality based community and somehow this is not the dominant narrative or even one of the dominant voices in the narrative. Instead it's like, okay, you know, there's a few of us and the crazy people are just louder.

• 41:19Ed Zitron?

  And how do you, how do you see any of this going? Like just, you don't have to come up with a perfect dance here. I realized somewhat on the spot. It's like, how does this realistically go from here? Because even putting aside the economics, it doesn't seem to be getting better in a way that matters.

• 41:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean,

• 41:41Speaker 06

  we're in a bubble. It's going to crash at some point, right? That bubble is going to pop. And at that point, I'm not completely sure what's going to happen. It's going to depend on, you know, where we are when the bubble pops, what happens. But what's happening when it pops, but uh, you know, I think that we're going to see a few things, right? We're going to see.

• 42:07Speaker 06

  I I would like to.

• 42:11Speaker 06

  Well, there's a few different things that could happen. Yeah, sorry, I'm stumbling over my words here, but like, I think. I think that.

• 42:19Speaker 06

  What the tech industry or the leaders of the tech industry would like to happen at that point is they would like to use the fact that by then, you know, that they will have and kind of already have. You know, eaten all of the new computing hardware. And, you know, created these giant data centers and try to repurpose them for something else. Because at this point, you know, like, it's, it's, you know, hard to get a stick of RAM if you're not using it for a giant data center. And I think they love that, right? They want everyone to be using cloud computing and not doing any computing on their own actual computers.

• 43:00Speaker 06

  So they want to, you know, take that power that they've taken and keep it. And so they try to come up with, with some other. Thing to be the next hype cycle that will incorporate, you know, the earlier hype cycles of AI and crypto and all the other stuff that came before. And say, oh, no, no, this is the big thing. And it's going to make all of the other things work. And it'll be different this time. We promise, guys, we swear the same way that they did with this. Versus crypto and it's going to be the same people shilling it both in the industry and the industry watchers.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  You know, the same way that Kevin Roos was a shell for crypto and now he's a shell for AI.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  In any event, that's what.

• 43:41Ed Zitron?

  Quantum.

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:42Ed Zitron?

  If you see Kevin, if Kevin Roos writes about quantum.

• 43:45Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 43:45Ed Zitron?

  That's how you know the AI bubble has burst.

• 43:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's probably right.

• 43:48Ed Zitron?

  He's, he's running for the exits.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I, I think that's exactly right. But that's what the industry wants, right? You know, the other or another way that it could go is when that bubble pops. You're going to see the current AI backlash, which I think that outside of the tech industry, AI is not actually very popular at all. And I think that people in the tech industry really underestimate that. And if there's a bubble that pops and that leads to a crash, that's going to supercharge the backlash against AI in a way that the tech industry is just not prepared

• 44:31Speaker 06

  for, I think. And I would like to see that lead to some kind of reckoning.

• 44:37Ed Zitron?

  So I want to be, I'm going to lead into a sentence that you're going to almost immediately guess what I'm talking about. I want to be clear that what happened to Sam Altman, the person who threw a Molotov cocktail, the person that threw, that shot bullets, that is morally reprehensible. You cannot do that. It's disgusting. I'm against him. I will say that these, that I'm surprised that these companies are surprised because it's like, for the best part of four years, they have said, we are taking your job. We need everything. As you, a regular person, struggle to get credit or thrive or pay your student loans, like in, everything's more expensive, everything sucks. But we, the AI industry, get whatever,

• 45:19Ed Zitron?

  whatever we want. And our explicit goal is to take your job. And the thing we own will control everything and all sources of income and everything will go through us. You should be scared because we're scared too. I feel like they should have seen this. I don't think it should happen to them. I want to be really clear for legal reasons. But it's like, why are they surprised? Like, this is exactly the, like, you've been scaring mental, you've been scaring everyone, but mentally unstable people will also get scared.

• 45:53Ed Zitron?

  And it's horrible and it it's horrible because it's like I don't want more of this to happen, but I don't see how it stops.

• 46:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I mean, I I they are not used to their actions having consequences.

• 46:09Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 46:09Speaker 06

  And again, you know, billionaire brain, right? When you're a billionaire, your actions pretty much don't have consequences in a way. Again, what happened with Sam Altman and the Molotov cocktail that is morally reprehensible, that stuff should not happen. But in a way, the reason that was a headline was that it was a billionaire who almost faced a consequence.

• 46:30Ed Zitron?

  Yes. And someone who has said, and it was I've recently checked this, since I think it was April 2023, Sam Altman has been saying, I'm scared of what we're building.

• 46:41Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 46:42Ed Zitron?

  Dario Amade has been saying for years, this will destroy all white collar labor.

• 46:45Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 46:46Ed Zitron?

  They have been saying, we always need more compute. And as I think the regular people face this as well, I don't think an average person feels like they are taken super seriously by the world.

• 46:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:56Ed Zitron?

  The world does not feel hospitable to the average person, but every time an AI person says literally anything, it's one page news and it's taken with the the complete seriousness. The government has meetings about it.

• 47:07Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 47:08Ed Zitron?

  So, yeah, I don't know. Why would people possibly feel angry?

• 47:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:13Ed Zitron?

  About any of it. It's just what the thing that I'm saying, saying in the newsletter as well. It's like, I think these people should tone down. They've said that we need to tone down the rhetoric. I agree. I think that they should stop talking about the models that the way they do.

• 47:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:26Ed Zitron?

  I also don't see this alarmism with the AI psychosis.

• 47:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's really, it's really striking the things that they're willing to sort of incite a moral panic about and the things that they want, right? They want to get people worried about this stuff, taking all white collar jobs. They want to get people worried that it's powerful enough to destroy the world and that it's the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. And they don't want to talk about the people right now who are, you know, going insane and dying because of the existing products that we already have.

• 48:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And I think also, here's the thing that you you will, did you see the the one of the blokes, one of the blokes, who the one who threw the Molotov cocktail, apparently he had posted Yudkowsky's, um, if if if they build it, we'll shit myself.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:24Ed Zitron?

  Whatever it's called.

• 48:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:25Ed Zitron?

  Like, and it's just like.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  Everyone dies. Yeah.

• 48:28Ed Zitron?

  Just like, oh, I don't know. Are you surprised that people who have been that you've monetized scaring people?

• 48:35Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 48:36Ed Zitron?

  And people are scared?

• 48:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. No, and I mean, you know, for all that Altman says that he disagrees with Yudkowsky, Altman also said that he thinks Yudkowsky probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, which I just.

• 48:52Ed Zitron?

  Which is one of the more, what for?

• 48:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:56Ed Zitron?

  Like, what what possibly for? Strangest man?

• 49:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. No, these guys are just not.

• 49:03Ed Zitron?

  Weirdest guy we have to hear from. Yudkowsky with the Nobel Peace Prize for strange boy. Weirdest, most unnecessary Harry Potter fanfic.

• 49:14Speaker 06

  Ah, yeah, definitely.

• 49:16Ed Zitron?

  New categories in the Nobel. But it's just, but it, no, but that's the thing. It's like, to your point, yeah, it's exactly, it is something that Altman claims to not endorse, but wholeheartedly does.

• 49:27Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:27Ed Zitron?

  And what's also interesting is, I haven't heard anything from Dario Amadei about it.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 49:32Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna, you'd you'd think within a situation like this, Dario Amadei would go and be like, I'm so sorry that's happening to Sam Altman. It's terrible. It's nothing.

• 49:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, that is a good point. I hadn't thought of it.

• 49:42Ed Zitron?

  Kind of respected.

• 49:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:45Ed Zitron?

  Kind of, no, I kind of respect, because like, we've really not had men of industry who just fucking hate each other in a while. So I think it's nice to see, nice to see like some classic robber baron shit, but it's, and now, as of the morning of recording this, OpenAI, an internal memo with a clear purpose of being leaked, saying that Anthropic is overstating their revenues. It's just, it's just, it's really, we are getting into the funny part, at least.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, the cool zone, as it were.

• 50:15Ed Zitron?

  Yes, exactly. That's. That's where we're on.

• 50:17Speaker 06

  It's so unfortunate.

• 50:20Ed Zitron?

  It really like this. On one level, it's very funny on the other. It's just like, we could be doing anything else.

• 50:25Speaker 06

  Yep. No, I mean, these guys love talking about opportunity costs. I'm like, what about the opportunity cost of like, you fucking having your money and your position in society? Cause I think that that's just enormous for like the opportunity cost of having a Sam Altman or having an Elon Musk is just so enormous and they never fucking talk about it because of course they don't.

• 50:51Ed Zitron?

  Have you seen, did you hear about SpaceX's excellent economics? They lost five billion dollars last year.

• 50:58Speaker 06

  Oh God, no, I hadn't heard that. I've been busy with other, like with launching my.

• 51:02Ed Zitron?

  You've been busy like enjoying your life rather than reading Elon about Elon Musk. It is, I will give Elon Musk credit. He has invented a new way to fuck up his company. Just like, just like attaching an AI company to SpaceX, which has useful products like Starlink that people seem to like.

• 51:23Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 51:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I mean, if it works, then he has to fuck it up, right? Same way he did with Twitter.

• 51:31Ed Zitron?

  Talking of billionaires, have you been looking at Gary Tan?

• 51:34Speaker 06

  No, actually I haven't. What's he been up to?

• 51:37Ed Zitron?

  So he's the head of Y Combinator and he's currently experiencing his own AI psychosis of sort because he's become, he's become this weird, like he has this thing called G stack, which is his Claude code setup and it's just, it's literally just add Claude dot M D, I believe. It's like, and it had, people really like it because people want to get into Y Combinator.

• 52:01Speaker 06

  Right.

• 52:01Ed Zitron?

  So they say nice things, but it's been very funny because apparently his website just has like tens of thousands of lines of code on it.

• 52:11Ed Zitron?

  It's like it's it kind of feels like watching a kid at a cinema or arcade machine.

• 52:18Ed Zitron?

  And they just kind of like pull, they're not got any money in it. They just put it at the wheel. Like Ridge Racer or something, or like Time Crisis, they got the gun pointing at the screen. No money in there. It's just very weird because I keep getting back to this thing. It's like the glasses from They Live. We're finally seeing who the Dunces truly are. All of these people who are allegedly smart are actually the literal opposite.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 52:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's unfortunate. Well, why don't we wrap it up there?

• 52:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:48Ed Zitron?

  Adam, tell us about this new podcast. What sort of things have you got coming down the pike? What plans have you got? Let's end on a high note.

• 52:55Speaker 06

  Absolutely. So the podcast again is called Dreaming Against the Machine. And we're launching, I mean, as of this recording, we're launching tomorrow is our first real episode. And we have a bunch of great guests coming up. You're one of them, Ed. And we've also got, who else do we have? We've got a bunch of the original AI bias people like Sophia Noble and

• 53:26Speaker 06

  and Cathy O'Neill. We've got some great sci fi people like Kim Stanley Robinson coming on the podcast. And, you know, some, some really great scientists as well. Like John De Prescott Weinstein, who we're talking with about Star Trek. And, and also, you know, some amazing haters like you or Dave Karp. So, yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. The conversations have already, we've already got a few episodes in the can and those conversations have been great. And basically, it's going to be a place to try to figure out

• 54:09Speaker 06

  what a good future might look like and try to look for some hope. And be really cringingly sincere and earnest because that's kind of my entire deal.

• 54:21Ed Zitron?

  And I think that's the only way to fight against the darkness, really. Like, it's the only, the only real way forward for the light to win is to actually be sincere about the things we like, because as much of a haters as I am, I do love the people in this community and the people who go, "You're awesome." Like, we can have cool conversations on this show that are not happening elsewhere. I'm glad that someone is doing something positive.

• 54:43Speaker 06

  Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that was the idea. It was like, there's enough darkness out there. If we wanna, if we wanna win this thing, it's not enough to say what we don't like. We gotta talk about what we want.

• 54:54Ed Zitron?

  Hell, yeah. Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me. We will link to all of your, your various escapades in the pro, in the episode notes, flawless there, just gonna keep going. I am, of course, Ed Zitron. You can find me on a monologue this week. I'm not gonna surprise you with Ronan Farrow interview again. But yes, thank you all for listening, of course. You'll catch us on the monologue, and we'll have some fun interviews coming up, everyone. Got the Boys from This Machine Kills coming as well. Anyway, catch you on the monologue, everyone, and thank you, Adam, for joining us.

• 55:25Speaker 06

  Thanks, Ed, for having me.

• 55:34Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com, M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot app to visit the Discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 56:07Speaker 07

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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