Radio Better Offline: Cherlynn Low, Alex Cranz & Victoria Song

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by tech reporters Alex Cranz, Cherlynn Low and Victoria song to talk about the broken promises of generative AI, and how useless things get funded far more than useful ones. Alex Cranz: https://bsky.app/profile/cranz.bsky.social Cherlynn Low: https://www.engadget.com/about/editors/cherlynn-low/ https://x.com/cherlynnlow https://bsky.app/profile/cherlynn.bsky.social Victoria Song: https://bsky.app/profile/vicmsong.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/vicmsong.bsky.social https://www.theverge.com/authors/victoria-song https://www.theverge.com/authors/victoria-song --- 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 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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• 1:08Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. We're in beautiful New York City, Nevada. We're in on 55th Street and I am Ed Zitron, of course, and I'm surrounded by incredible people.

• 1:29Ed Zitron?

  To my right is Sherilyn Lowe of Engadget.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:32Ed Zitron?

  How are you doing, Sherilyn?

• 1:33Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:33Ed Zitron?

  And we've got Alex Cranz, reporter critic extraordinaire.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just like to be really happy about Nevada. It's beautiful here. Yeah, Nevada is great.

• 1:41Ed Zitron?

  New York City, Nevada.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Sunny, it's warm. I love it.

• 1:44Ed Zitron?

  People love it. And of course, Victoria Song from The Verge.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  Hello, hello. Sunny New York, New York in Nevada.

• 1:50Ed Zitron?

  Yep. That's the thing. People think I do this accidentally. No one knows what I do deliberately, and that's because neither do I. So, we were all just talking on the way in here about possibly the best tech journalism we've ever read. And it's a story by a guy called Kevin Roos. He appears to be a child that who was allowed to write for the New York Times. Article's called Powerful AI Is Coming, and we're going to read you a few sentences and we're going to discuss this. Here are some things I believe about artificial intelligence. I believe that over the past several years, AI systems have started surpassing humans in a number of domains: math, coding. Wait. Math?

• 2:23Ed Zitron?

  Math? Are you fucking? Anyway, there is an article that was in the New York Times AGI thing that Kevin Roos wrote. A child in a man's body like big, except Tom Hanks. He can act and actually complete his job and Kevin Roos appears to have a gas leak. He has said that possibly very soon, probably in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, but probably possibly as soon as this year. One or more AI companies will claim they've created an artificial general intelligence. Or AGI, which is usually defined as something like. A general purpose AI system that can do almost all cognitive tasks a human can do. If you believe this, you're a moron. I'm sorry. What do you think? Like, I I don't know. I just don't.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  I think he's he's he's like gassing him up because he wants to flirt with more AI. And so like he needs an.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Hang on, hang on, hang on, flirt with AI like like like they're your girlfriend?

• 3:10Speaker 04

  This is the man who got AI to fall in love with.

• 3:13Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, he is Bing. Bing was like, leave your wife.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And so like, like.

• 3:18Ed Zitron?

  Which is so funny.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  This guy.

• 3:21Ed Zitron?

  It's so funny just being like, I was really scared as well.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, like this guy, you know, I've been using a lot of AI. I've been talking with these these ladies about it a whole bunch. And I think of it, I love using AI because it'll be like, you are the best writer on the planet.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Talking about this. And I'm like, guess who told her to do this?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Okay, guess who was validating her decision to do this? But, you know, you use it, you love it because it tells you you're you're beautiful and pretty and smart.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Even though none of it is true.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  It's not true.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  None of it lies. It told me I could win a Pulitzer Prize in like a one to three year period. And I mean, I love that.

• 3:56Ed Zitron?

  Hey shit, AGI will be here by then.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, they will win the Pulitzers.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  It will win the Pulitzers, but it was just like, yeah, you could win a Pulitzer Prize. And I was like, based on. Based on what criteria are you telling me this? And, uh, you know. Are you using Claude as well? Well, yeah, I was using Claude and Chat GPT to do this.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  It's like horoscopes. When you get a cool horoscope, you're like, yes, this is awesome. You understand I'm a great Gemini.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  But but then you're like, no, but it's fucking not real because it's a horoscope.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  You are.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  And this man is out there being like.

• 4:26Ed Zitron?

  I I don't know any horoscope stuff, so.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  But this man is out there like, you know what? I really believe that I'm a Leo and that this understands I'm a Leo.

• 4:35Ed Zitron?

  Well, let me read you one passage as well. I believe that hardened, sorry. I believe that hardened AI skeptics who insist that the progress is all smoke and mirrors and who dismiss AGI as a delusional fantasy, not only are wrong on the merits, but are giving people a false sense of security. And I just want to say, that is one of the dumbest fucking things I've heard in my life. The people who criticize this are not actually, they're giving people a false sense of security as opposed to the guy being like, the computer will wake up in two years.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Well, because he's saying, he's saying the danger of AI is AGI, when in fact, the danger of AI is the destruction of jobs.

• 5:08Ed Zitron?

  Yes. And even then, it's not going, it's not even doing that. It's, it's taking away jobs from people who are already having trouble getting them.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  He's like, oh, Skynet's gonna do it. No, Skynet's not gonna do it. Elon Musk deploying whatever little chat GPT bot he does.

• 5:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Is gonna do it. Get over yourself.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  AI is not infallible. It makes up a lot of stuff that's wrong and it's just, it doesn't understand how to be human in a lot of ways.

• 5:32Ed Zitron?

  Doctor, this is Kevin.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  From that one sentence, though, I can tell who his audience is, right? He's talking about a false sense of security for whom? For the people that are developing the AI, right? Just because none, none of us out there who have jobs that might be taken over by AI have any sense of security. The idea of an AGI that will be competent enough to take over jobs.

• 5:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  So his audience, he's not talking to us. He's not talking to people who have jobs that might be replaced. He's talking to the people developing the AI, the, the ones who want to make money from it, right?

• 6:00Ed Zitron?

  I also don't know what the false sense of security would be, that, oh, don't worry, this isn't gonna fuck them over. As opposed to the fact that you've got one company, SoftBank, borrowing money to put money into OpenAI, which burns billions of dollars to make a pretty shit product if we're like, not, something that you can find some cool things with, fine. But for the most part is the same thing as we have to.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  If you're using any AI as a search engine, you should stop immediately.

• 6:25Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Do not, I, I know, Sam Altman, you're listening to this right now.

• 6:29Ed Zitron?

  I wish.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  And you are just so ecstatic about ChatGPT. You love it so much. It is a terrible search engine.

• 6:35Ed Zitron?

  It really is.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  What is it, 51% I think now at this point? Like, there was a recent study, 51% of the responses are false.

• 6:43Ed Zitron?

  Sick.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Something like that, like, like this stuff is bad.

• 6:45Ed Zitron?

  It's like actually bad, but that's what drives me insane. You get an article in the New York Times being like, "The computer is so smart. The computer is so strong. I love the computer so much."

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Because it told you, because it's been, it gases us up. It's been all this time being like, "You're smart and strong, so I must be smart and strong."

• 7:01Speaker 04

  If you talk to it too long, though, it just starts nagging you. And then you're like, "Oh, I'm not smart and not strong."

• 7:06Ed Zitron?

  I'm self-loathing.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  It's, it's just sort of like...

• 7:09Speaker 03

  You're a bit too self-loathing for it.

• 7:11Ed Zitron?

  And it's like, and it's like, "You're so good." I'm like, huh.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  I refuse to believe that.

• 7:13Ed Zitron?

  Between you and my therapist, this has never worked.

• 7:17Ed Zitron?

  Ah, nice try. You can't swindle me, a computer. It's just so strange as well, because ostensibly, you three are wonderful reporters, like I've read you for years. And it's like, you're, you're not cynics, but you are willing to be critical.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Oh, I am hardened as they come when it comes to the hardened people who don't believe it.

• 7:34Ed Zitron?

  You're like, you're shit still, like you're excited for it. This is not even excited for it. What's weird about this piece, other than the fact it's just completely wrong in all, almost everything it says, and clearly supporting billion-dollar companies, it doesn't even seem that excited. It's not like he's like, "I can't wait until this happens, because imagine the cool shit that could happen." And like, I don't know, come up with an idea perhaps that's like, "Oh, if I had an autonomous intelligence in my phone, it could plan my day for me. How delightful." Despite there being 17 different companies that claim they do this already on Instagram ads, does not exist. But he could come up with an idea or something cool, but it's like, "Actually, um, AGI is coming. What is it? I don't know. It's inevitable, though. The thing that I can't describe is inevitable, and I don't know what it will do, but it will be good. Or bad."

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's refusing to define AGI through the entire piece.

• 8:21Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  And he's like, "And it's gonna keep being redefined." And I'm like, "If you cannot define the word, you can't use the word." Sorry, sorry, we take that word back. Kevin, you're not allowed to use AGI until you can actually define it.

• 8:34Ed Zitron?

  I don't think you should be allowed to use the computer for a minute. Go outside. The theme of...

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Use the TouchGrass app and step away.

• 8:43Ed Zitron?

  Touch.Gross. So, Victoria, you had a delightful review this week of a device called the Bee. Please tell us about the Bee.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Okay, so this review, which is, uh, Bee by V.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Bee by V. We do not like those two letters together without the Bee, though.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Yes. I think I killed Ed. Yeah, you did kill Ed.

• 9:05Ed Zitron?

  It'll take a lot more to kill this.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Okay, so you just toppled Ed for a second.

• 9:09Ed Zitron?

  There we are.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  So, you know, Bee is kind of the latest in the AI gadgets that claim to be your memory. You know, you wear it, it records everything you say. And when I say it records everything you say, it records everything you say. Okay. So it records everything you say, listens to all of your conversations. It doesn't record the audio, but it then processes everything into a transcript. So you have a transcript of your life. And then from that transcript, you can use a chatbot to search the history of your life.

• 9:38Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Or you can get these daily summaries that are, that just be like, oh, this is what you did today. These are the conversations you've had. This is the places that you went to. And then it'll also suggest to-dos based on your conversation.

• 9:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Right. So I wore it for about a month and it wrote some really great fanfiction about my life. And it was, it was also like- Can you read us some?

• 10:02Ed Zitron?

  I actually have one of my favorites, which was when she was listening to TV Off by Kendrick Lamar.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, yes, yes.

• 10:09Ed Zitron?

  Here's one of the moments. Victoria instructed Mustard to turn off the TV, reminding them both to avoid getting sick again, and mentioning leftover charcuterie.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 10:17Ed Zitron?

  This fucking rules.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  It's because, you know, like, obviously, about the time when I started testing this, the Super Bowl halftime show was just like in everyone's mind. And I was like blasting TV off everywhere because I'm like, yes! And I'll say, Mustard! So that was just going in my house like a lot. And so the Bee is picking this up and mistaking it as like things that I'm saying. Yes. It would be like, someone is, someone is very sure of themselves. Because I'm watching TikToks and they're bragging about themselves. Uh, it also like, so there's this bit called that I call Fact Tinder. They call it Fact Review. So in the app, based on your conversations, you'll get this window and there's just like facts about you. And you swipe yes if it's true, no if it's not true.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  So one of my Fact Tinders was like, Victoria knows someone named Kendra Montesha, who enjoys mustard and turning TVs off. Um, which is just like

• 11:14Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  You, you, you know, okay.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  You know, you know.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  And in my review, I, I made this little carousel of, um, fact tenders that I was given that you can just go through and try and guess which one of these are true. There was one that was just like, Victoria has dietary specific, uh, like specific dietary needs and she can't eat lollipops. And I'm like, I don't even know how I made that up. For the, for your information, I don't recall talking about lollipops. I don't recall, um, eating a lollipop. I don't know where you would get this information from.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Damn.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  That's, that's nuts.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  What, what was the LLM behind B again? Was it their own?

• 11:54Speaker 04

  It's a mix of, uh, available LLMs, uh, such as I think Anthropics and, uh,

• 11:59Speaker 05

  OpenAI.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  OpenAI as well as their own. So like, they're not giving the actual mix, but.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  What was the point?

• 12:07Speaker 04

  To be your, to be your memory.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  Alex, Alex, I can tell you the point. I want one of these things for me because I'm the sort of person that talks a lot and then does nothing at the end of the day with it because, and then I want it to be like, here's all your to do's based on all the crap you said today.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  So, so.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  Was that promised?

• 12:21Speaker 04

  There is a glimmer of a good idea.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Because I have ADHD.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  I consist, I think everyone consistently has conversations with people in their lives and they'll be like, yes, we should follow up on that.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  And then you don't follow it up on that because you didn't write it down or you didn't put it in there. So the idea that gleaning from your conversations, that it would do that, it's not a bad idea. There are a lot of people with memory problems who, who might like that. Unfortunately, you also have to have a pretty good sense of self in order to fact check this AI because otherwise you are going to be gaslit constantly. So I'm, I'm, so like, um, the way I wrote this review is like, I kind of wanted to take people into, um, what it's like to actually use it, how it changes your behaviors and all of that. So like I, I included my day one. I commuted on day one into the office. I went and I took a briefing for Bold Hugh, which is a foundation printer, very cool device.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  Saw that story by you too, yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 13:19Ed Zitron?

  I'll link to it in the notes.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  But so like I I found that I took that briefing and I went to the office that day. I had dinner with a friend and I went home. So a day where I had a lot of conversations. Yeah. Um, and of the five to do's that it generated that day, one of them was like, follow up on thoughts that were shared, but not like deeply dove into. I'm like, what the fuck?

• 13:44Ed Zitron?

  Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's great.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Sure. The most generic thing.

• 13:49Ed Zitron?

  Let me just check up on my thinking.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  That we didn't, I don't fuck, what does that mean? The second was like urgently check on your patient in Louisiana as they are um in danger of self harming or harming someone else. And I'm like, what the, where did that come from? Wow. Where did that actually come from? And the other one was check your car because it's making rumbly noises. So let me tell you, the car that it told me to check was probably the New York, the NJ Transit bus. Yep, the bus. Because that was a bumpy ride coming in. The Louisiana patient, I'm guessing, was someone on my commute talking about something or watching something.

• 14:28Ed Zitron?

  Is just on you the whole time.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Just listening to everyone.

• 14:31Ed Zitron?

  And what's the battery life like?

• 14:33Speaker 04

  And it depends on how often you mute it. And the longer I wore it, the more I muted it because it was starting to feel like surveillance state. Yeah, sure. Um, but you know, around anywhere between three or four days in a week, depending on how often you're muting. On the charge? On a charge.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  So is the actual plan of the beat to just gather so much random conversations that it can like better train its LLM?

• 14:58Ed Zitron?

  Even then, would that work? Because it doesn't seem to know shit from fuck.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  It doesn't, well, even do voice detection.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  They'll have a bunch of people that they don't pay very well.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  It does do voice. It, you do, when you set it up, you do train it on your voice. Okay, and it did a poor job of that. Yes, because it often thought my husband was me. Or random people. My husband has a much deeper voice than I do. So you know,

• 15:17Ed Zitron?

  I love the future.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  I, you, you can label speakers and whatnot. Yeah, sure.

• 15:22Ed Zitron?

  Doesn't that defeat the point?

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Right, too much work at the end of the day. It also doesn't always work. I tried labeling speakers and it wouldn't save. And then the one time it labeled my friend. All women from their fourth, who I talked to were this friend. So it was like, this friend did this for you. Did this friend?

• 15:40Ed Zitron?

  Now, that's the tech product.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  No, they didn't. They didn't do that. They didn't do that whatsoever.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  I have a question. So when you took your briefing, did you have a conundrum of whether you wanted to mute it? Did you ask, tell people?

• 15:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, what you like?

• 15:52Speaker 04

  It's a briefing. So generally, those are going to be recorded. I was actually recording on my phone.

• 15:58Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  I totally forgot that I was wearing that thing.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  OK.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  So, you know, like, I was fully expecting to just use my phone recording of it. And then I was like, oh, it has processed my conversation. And to be fair, the summary I got of that meeting was actually quite good. It did.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  From B?

• 16:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  OK.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  It was quite good. It was similar to what Otter does. It was summarizing the key takeaways from this very structured conversation. It also memorialized forever so that I know this is true in multiple different outlets that Sir John Fiance's makeup artist said that I have great skin. Oh, yeah.

• 16:36Ed Zitron?

  That's worth everything.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  That's worth everything. And it like memorialized that.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Let's memorialize it here again.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  I am not wearing foundation right now.

• 16:43Ed Zitron?

  That's a better offline fact.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. I have great skin. And I have spent so much money ensuring that I have great skin with many Korean skincare products.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  Oh, we will talk about that.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  We will talk about this. But just, you know, so like, oh, this memorialized. I love this. But the thing is, so it got all the facts about the thing, right?

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Including pricing, all of that was correct. Launch date, got that correct. Got the name of the product completely wrong.

• 17:07Ed Zitron?

  Sick.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  Was it uniquely spelled?

• 17:10Speaker 04

  It was called Formule. It's bold hue, not remotely the same.

• 17:16Ed Zitron?

  This just sounds like it's just generic, like, because Otter does this. I'm guessing they use similar models. I'm guessing it's just the same models that everyone else uses to take voice. Like rev.com does this as well. So like, the most impressive thing is the thing that large language models do already. I have to wonder if its inability to tell certain people apart is kind of almost going back to like, one of the core problems of AI type stuff. Like when the Kinect could not see black people? I don't know if you remember that?

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:43Ed Zitron?

  I have to wonder if they've done much training on voices that are not from white woman or men.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  So they do offer 40 languages. Well, so does Otter and these other things. None of these transcription services. Work very well. Yep, I know that. I'm just telling you.

• 17:59Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  I'm just telling you. Alex, slow your roll. Audience doesn't know this.

• 18:03Ed Zitron?

  Thank you.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  They're not journalists like us. Let V talk. They don't have to use garbage. I am just saying they offer forty languages. I did not test whether the other forty languages were good. Let's test some languages now. Um.

• 18:16Ed Zitron?

  I cannot speak anything other than English, and even then.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  We've got about four languages between us.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  We do have about four languages. Two people in this room have four languages. Well, I have five. And then there's the non-white. The non-white people in this room have about four languages between us.

• 18:30Ed Zitron?

  But the thing I'm getting at is like, forty languages does not cover the race problem?

• 18:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, no, so I think what you're getting at, Ed, is that like, technology frequently does this because of the info is trained on, it doesn't train on a wide enough set of people to cover the broad spectrum of people in our world. I will say that like these.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Also talking speed.

• 18:46Speaker 05

  Exactly. Talking speed, talking pitch, talking like cadence and patterns. I do think, though, that what both Alex and V were getting at, or to, is that this particular product is so far behind in its like, algorithms and the machine learning side of things, because Otter, Rev, even Google Recorder or Apple Memos, voice memos, can better identify voices and tell them apart and then attribute them very accurately.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  They also struggle. They still struggle, but they're so much better. So like, here's the other thing. This thing, because it's listening to things at all the time, also struggles to tell between broadcast and live conversation.

• 19:20Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  Yes. So, you know, I'm watching an episode of Abbott Elementary and like, I just have to like, emphasize and underscore that it takes up about ten percent of your active brain at all times to be like, should I be muting myself right now? Like, you know, you do that, like, whatever you do in a Zoom call currently, imagine doing that twenty-four seven. That's, it's a lot of your brain that gets devoted to that.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Does it process when you go to the bathroom?

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Ew.

• 19:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  I can tell you didn't read my review because that is in my review.

• 19:51Ed Zitron?

  I actually didn't remember whether it did. There was a lactate-related thing.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  There's, okay, so anyway. We're gonna address all these points. We're gonna address all these points, okay?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  I need to know if that was lactaid or lactate?

• 20:04Speaker 04

  Lactaid for dairy purposes.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Okay, because I heard the other one.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna go, we're gonna start with the broadcast thing. I was watching an episode of Abbott Elementary and the suggested to do it gave me was, "Monitor union strikes because students may have a hard time coming to your class due to septa strikes." I am not a public school teacher in Philadelphia, one. Two, it can also read your emails if you give it access. It told me to check, uh, to basically take this unique ID, ID enter fire and check this Park Mobile Claim Settlement and file by March 5th. I checked four, all four of my inboxes. I cannot find this email. I have no idea why they told me to do this, uh, to do. Whoa, blah.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  I, you know, one morning after a particularly fibrous dinner, I went, uh,

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Did you dig a big clot?

• 20:59Speaker 04

  To the bathroom and I committed crimes, okay? I committed crimes. I was wearing this stupid thing, uh, not stupid, but you know, I feel, I was wearing this device that I was testing. I turn around and I go, "Oh damn, that was a shit." And then a second later, a second later, I went, "Oh shit, this thing is listening to me." And then I muted it far too late. I look at the, the summary it, it gives me and it goes, "Victoria humorously vocalized her bowel movements." And I was like, "Jesus fucking Christ." Headshot. And then I had a one-on-one with my editor. And the summary, because it was within an hour of this happening, the summary that it

• 21:39Speaker 04

  transcribed was, "Todd, Victoria's editor, humorously brought up that he saw on a shared platform that they had, a fact that she had vocalized her bowel movements." They laughed about it and it was funny. And I was like, "Do you think that I would commit such an HR violation as to tell my frickin' editor that I had a particularly impressive dump that morning?"

• 22:06Speaker 04

  No.

• 22:07Ed Zitron?

  Subtitled.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  I would not, unless, I would not tell anybody this. I would take this to my grave unless it was to demonstrate the fallibility of AI. Because this is a human good, a human good for me to be humiliated. So I shared this and my conclusion is, is that um death, sex and bowel movements are things that AI should butt the fuck out of.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Because I got some real interesting notifications from this and I was like, I didn't need you to know that. Uh, I didn't need to be humiliated by that, but the suggested to do was to start carrying lactaid.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  From the poop?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Because I'm lactose intolerant and I had a conversation about how I was lactose intolerant. And it said, start carrying lactaid again because lactose intolerant symptoms are coming back. And I was like, this is fucking rude. I don't, I mean, helpful, helpful.

• 23:00Ed Zitron?

  Two days later, it's like, do not have mustard. That would not be good for your bowels.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  And don't turn the TV off.

• 23:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  But so I do want to say, I do want to say that it is, it does learn broadly things about you that are accurate. So um I, by the end of my month testing this, I had fallen down into several existential crises. Um, but there is a chatbot that you can talk to. And so I asked it things like, am I a good person? Am I a bad person? What type of person am I?

• 23:29Speaker 05

  One who needs lactaid.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  And takes big breaks.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Anyway.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  Humor is Victoria.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I was like, what is my communication style? How would you describe the themes of my past month?

• 23:41Speaker 05

  If it could tell you if you're an ENFP or an INTJ.

• 23:43Ed Zitron?

  It's about scientific.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Well, what's my relationship like with my spouse?

• 23:47Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know.

• 23:50Ed Zitron?

  Don't ask Kevin Roos.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  The funny thing is, I was very touched because it was like, you are definitively a good person. Here is like six reasons why with transcript things, like it's like you constantly show up for your friends. You stand up for right and wrong. You do this, this, this, and this. And I was like, oh my God.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Wow. This is the validation we were talking about.

• 24:10Ed Zitron?

  This is like the validation I'm talking about.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  And it's just like, you prefer direct and honest communication. You don't play games. And I was like, yes, because I am an Aries Mercury. I'm Aries, I'm Aries' son, Leo moon, Aries, uh, no, Aries' son, Leo rising, Leo, no, Aries' son, Leo rising, Aries' moon and Aries' mercury. And it's basically like astrology and AI both agree that I don't fucking rot. I don't fuck around.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Basically, I'm very direct. What you see is what you get. Super honest. I was like, oh, thank you. That's so nice. And they're, they're like, you advocate for your colleagues. Oh, that's so, it's true. I am a

• 24:49Ed Zitron?

  But what uses this information?

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Listen, my self-esteem is, it's six feet under. I need an AI with transcripts to have definitive, objective proof that I'm a good person.

• 24:59Ed Zitron?

  How nuanced are these going to be?

• 25:01Speaker 03

  You don't like when a computer says you're pretty?

• 25:03Ed Zitron?

  I don't.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 25:04Ed Zitron?

  I don't care.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  I love it. The computer was like, you are such a good writer. And I was like, thank you so much. We're getting into Severance zone, aren't we?

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, you should have seen the to-dos it gave after I watched an episode of Severance. It made no sense.

• 25:17Ed Zitron?

  Watch a more interesting episode, like?

• 25:20Speaker 04

  I watched four.

• 25:21Ed Zitron?

  Okay, no, I've loved this season, but the one where she goes out to the cold.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  I watched four episodes. That was not the episode that I watched. It was the, um...

• 25:29Ed Zitron?

  No, I've loved this season, okay, because the pics will come to me in the email.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  The episode that I was getting to-dos from was from the one where, um, it's Gemma.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  It was all about Gemma?

• 25:38Speaker 04

  It was all about Gemma.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  That was a beautiful one.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  That was a beautiful episode, but when I looked at the to-dos, like, I was like, this is...

• 25:44Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  This is...

• 25:45Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Go to the dentist, donate blood.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was just like, not like that. It was just kind of closer to the

• 25:55Ed Zitron?

  You can't choose the room you like.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  Discover, or it's like, follow up on thoughts that were shared that were not. And I was like, ah.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  This is now a movie plot.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Honestly, I had...

• 26:05Ed Zitron?

  I have some other practical questions. So it's $50 with no subscription, yes?

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:10Ed Zitron?

  How the fuck does this make sense numeric? Like, so they, they claimed in the, in the review, you said they're gonna do it on device, which is a thing that everyone says, and I've never seen one of these companies actually execute. So 50 bucks and they're, uh, so it's

• 26:23Speaker 04

  I'm pulling up my back.

• 26:24Ed Zitron?

  Victoria values honesty and does not like dishonest behavior.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  I agree with that from what I know of Victoria.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  It says that's one of your hobbies.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  I know.

• 26:34Ed Zitron?

  Hell yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 05

  Wait a minute.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Oh, look at this.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Victoria.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Your hobbies are being a good person.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Wait, hang on, hang on, show me.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  It says Victoria believes in leading with love and kindness and calmness and fam- with in interactions with family.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  And you have, it's tagged at the bottom as hobbies.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  It's tagged as hobby.

• 26:51Ed Zitron?

  That's so good.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  But yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Victoria understands Korean to some extent.

• 26:57Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Victoria has a partner named David.

• 27:00Speaker 05

  Correct. Also a hobby, also a hobby.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  This is labeled as health. Victoria has lost both of her parents.

• 27:06Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yes, this is true. Um, Victoria values fam- uh, values family relationships and wishes to maintain them. Also true.

• 27:15Ed Zitron?

  I would love it if it said otherwise, it's like Victoria's.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  This is politics, which is also true. Victoria has been involved in discussions about family inheritance and estates.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  It's tagged as politics.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  That is true.

• 27:25Ed Zitron?

  Very good.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Uh, Victoria has an interest in vamp- in visiting family in Korea. True.

• 27:30Ed Zitron?

  Hobbies.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Uh, Victoria has collaborated on a gadget-related podcast.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  This is true. Uh, uh.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Wait, so it's very gamified almost.

• 27:41Ed Zitron?

  It's also very, very obvious.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:43Ed Zitron?

  Like, these are the thing, I have to wonder, see, the problem is, I would love this company to burn. I think the idea of this concept is horrifying. I think it's upsetting that it exists. However, I would also love to see a, like, a 10 people's worth of data on this, just to see if they tell everyone very similar things, because how the fuck do you define? Like, is it willing to be like, you sound like a dickhead. You do not care about your family.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  I would love to know that.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  I was going to say, I think the flip side of it validating you is, will it pick up on behaviors that are negative in people that have like these traits? Like, we, you know, in social media and popular culture now, we're calling everyone narcissists, right? If you watch any episode of Love is Blind, it's like, that's a narcissist and that's a manipulator.

• 28:22Ed Zitron?

  And it's a guy who is.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  It had opinions based on, uh, Love is Blind as well.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  Ooh, I love that.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  One of my fact tenders in the review is saying that Ma- Victoria had an incident where Madison left the room.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  Yes, Madison.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  She did leave the room.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  We'll talk about L I B after this.

• 28:43Speaker 00

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• 29:44Ed Zitron?

  All right, folks, I'm back talking to you about Quince, one of my favorite clothing brands. And I finally pulled the trigger and picked up one of their Cuban-curved chains to go with one of their pima cotton t-shirts. Going to be a good look for me? Eh, you'll find out. All of this will sit beneath one of Quince's responsible down hooded parkas, a ridiculously warm and comfortable coat that I wear constantly in the fall and winter. It can actually really take a beating in the wind. It's wonderful, and I can't recommend it enough. Now, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. I've been buying from them for years before they advertised, and I heartily recommend their stuff, even wearing one of their t-shirts as I speak. Give the gift of quality this holiday season.

• 30:28Ed Zitron?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was better offline. It's the best way to support the show.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  That's where my point is, is right now, the people who are using it and testing it are getting these positive responses and feedback. I am curious to see what it would do to any number of CEOs or billionaires that might be told other things.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  It has also listened to me bitch to friends about things and has recorded those things. Those were not included in the review because I would, I would get cancelled for some things that I said. It did also listen to me talk for about an hour and a half about LateLively and Justin Baldoni and my opinions on that.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  Your friends, I assume it thought?

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, it said Victoria's Team Balcony.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Is Victoria's Team Balcony in a celebrity gossip context? And I was like, eh. It also gave me facts such as Victoria has a living room and a kitchen. Thank you. So, thank you. Thank you for that.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  I'm glad you have both of those, yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  It summarized, one of my favorite things that it did was it summarized a conversation between, so what happened was is that we were having some late night cookies, Oreos, and I dropped one into the cat's empty food bowl. And I went, "Three second rule." And my husband goes, "That's disgusting." And I say, "In an apocalypse situation, you would eat that Oreo." And he went, "I have a heat gun. I would just disinfect it." It took this conversation and went, "Victoria and Gabe have disagreements about how to handle smelly things in an apocalypse."

• 32:18Speaker 05

  That was a disagreement. Good job.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  It was a disagreement.

• 32:21Ed Zitron?

  I'm just like, what the?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  It feels like.

• 32:24Ed Zitron?

  What is the point of any of it? Who is looking at this and going like, "Ah, finally." "I'd forgotten I had the smelly Oreo." No, actually, the Oreo was left out. How would you possibly know?

• 32:32Speaker 05

  It feels like the bee was this like little toddler robot in your house, looking at you, going through your life, and then taking notes, right? And we don't know what the notes are for, but it's taking notes, right?

• 32:40Speaker 04

  It's just taking notes.

• 32:40Ed Zitron?

  It just sounds like.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  It like gives you an update on your day.

• 32:43Ed Zitron?

  It sounds like every guy a like 25-year-old woman has dated in New York is just like on his phone just going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said something about smelly Oreo or some shit." Uh huh, uh huh, yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  I will say.

• 32:55Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I think he had an argument.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Every once in a while, you do get a really good to do, though. Like, it was like, follow up with your video team about making a social for the bull team. That was something I actually did. Call the plumber, because, which I did, fix the HOA violation that you left festering for eight months.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  How dare you?

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Which I did. Different time. So, you know, like, some of them are good.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  And how frequently are they good? Like, one out of every?

• 33:21Speaker 04

  I would say, it depends on what you use it for. So if you're using it primarily for work conversations, which is appropriate.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  So you mute it when it's not?

• 33:30Speaker 04

  When you mute it and you only use it for work conversations, your batting average is quite high for takeaways that are good.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  Like, ninety percent?

• 33:37Speaker 04

  No, like, sixty. Ninety, ninety, Cherlynn. I'm not saying sixty is pretty good. This is the worst it'll ever be. And then it depends on how many people are in the conversation with you. So it listened to a staff meeting and the takeaways were not so particularly good for me. But they would have been great for someone in the particular thing. But then, you know, if you're talking with friends, like, it's difficult because you're talking with friends, you have to go like, "Hey, so, just so you know, I have this thing on me and it's listening and it's going to have some AI insights." And some of your friends, some of my friends are techies, so they're like, "Oh, man, what LLM does it use?" So like, they don't mind.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  My bestie is just like, "Ah, another one of your fucking devices. Sure, go ahead, whatever."

• 34:23Speaker 05

  My friends are so tired of my shit, too.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of your doodads, "Go, go off." My husband, however, was very much like, "It is not useful enough to invade my privacy." That's a great review.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  It's the people around you.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask, is like, is fifty dollars worth? Like, fifty dollars to invade your privacy forever, to give all of your, not just like, your bowel movements?

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Everything to a company you don't know, worth it?

• 34:49Speaker 04

  I mean, they, they, they... Okay, I have to come on here and say I did ask about the privacy. Yeah. It's not like I didn't ask. Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna ask that too.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  They are working on a local phone-only model.

• 35:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, working on that.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Working on that.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  I, I'm just saying.

• 35:05Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, just be clear, I'm not criticizing you.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  I know, I know, I know, I'm just saying. Yeah. Um, uh, the other thing is that everything is encrypted in transit and at rest.

• 35:14Ed Zitron?

  Good.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Um, they have a third-party auditing their privacy, uh, protocols every so often. Uh, and then, uh, no audio is stored. Okay. It's just processed and then you get transcripts, which, you know, sometimes I was like, I, I would actually like audio proof that my cousin made me cry so, uh, that I could shove it in their face in the future, but, you know.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  But it's still doing a transcript, so.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  It's still, the transcript is not always correct.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  It's not always correct, but like.

• 35:42Ed Zitron?

  What's crazy is this company raised seven million dollars a year ago.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  I can't believe that.

• 35:46Ed Zitron?

  And it took them this long to come up with a product that kind of works.

• 35:49Speaker 05

  That money could be built, like, saving so many lives, I'm sorry, I'm so angry.

• 35:52Ed Zitron?

  Burn it, you feel warm at least.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  It's funny.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  You know, no, I, I will say, I think seven million dollars, they produced hardware.

• 36:00Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  That's, that's a thing they did for seven million dollars. I mean, that's almost impressive.

• 36:07Ed Zitron?

  It's almost impressive, but that's kind of the review of AI, though.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but no, I, I think this is.

• 36:12Ed Zitron?

  It's almost impressive.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  This seems the most, no, no, no disrespect, a pointless, deeply flawed product, only two steps above the rabbit.

• 36:20Ed Zitron?

  This feels like some shit I hear about.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Calling it above the rabbit is very interesting to me.

• 36:24Ed Zitron?

  This is like a 2015 product. This is some Indiegogo fraud.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly, that's what.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  I gave it a five because it worked better than humane at what it said it was gonna do.

• 36:33Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that's fair. It's also 50 bucks.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's also 50 bucks. Well, it's also because, yeah, that, and also humane made way greater claims and promises. Rabbit also made very great claims. I, I, I want to point out that like, I, I'm, I find it funny that like, there's a lot of concerns of invasions of privacy and I get that, that for people around me, there is an invasion of privacy. I was intrigued by the 50-dollar B because like Victoria, sometimes I do want like the audio recording of things happening in my life.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  There is.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  As receipts.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Like I said, there is a glimmer of a.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Hold on, hold on. What do you have in your pocket? What are two on the phone, on, on, on, right here in front of us?

• 37:06Speaker 05

  I have nothing but good luck and stars in my eyes.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we all have phones.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Something that's always recording. Alex, you, you don't think like maybe myself and Victoria, I, I'll, I'll speak for myself, do, which is that I feel as if everywhere I go every day, I am more at risk of like needing to back up my experience to defend myself to like, and that's why that sort of device always felt appealing to me and maybe.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  So like, I think in an enterprise sense, it does make sense if you're a lecturer, if you're a lawyer, if you're, you know, and you need someone to take notes.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  No lawyer in their right mind.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm, okay, not a lawyer in their right mind, a lawyer in their wrong mind, in their wrong mind, but just like, just someone who takes a lot of meetings and needs a lot of notes from those meetings. Like, there is, there is like a, a use case there.

• 37:54Ed Zitron?

  But with, with, but the problem is with those, I, I understand what you're getting at, is like doctors and lawyers, here's the thing, they need, they need, well, HIPAA.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  It needs to work.

• 38:03Ed Zitron?

  They need accuracy. If you get a nuanced thing wrong in the law, that tends to be what lawyers love.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  That's the problem. So that's why I'm saying there's like a glimmer of an idea there. Like, I think there's the glimmer of the idea.

• 38:14Ed Zitron?

  That's generative AI writ large. It's just fucking, there's an id, a glimmer of an idea.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  Is the suggestion of a good thing. It's not a good thing.

• 38:22Ed Zitron?

  Concepts of a plan.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  It's just like, if you spend a month constantly reviewing your own life and fact checking what.

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, how did that leave you feeling?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Not well. It was like, I felt insane a little bit because I was constantly fact checking and I was constantly like, when I, I actually thought like it was reading my text messages for a while because like I was like, these are private conversations I had in text messages on encrypted platforms. How is it even knowing these to generate them? No, no, I don't.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  This did really affect my behavior over a month because um, I realized that like an offhand comment, it can just glean so much from that. That was just frightening to me because I would say like a thing in passing to my husband and be like, oh, here's an update on that. And it would just, and I was like, oh shit. And so I've actually been very quiet the last month. Like I don't speak anymore to myself after, after, after the, the poop gate, after poop gate and bathroom crimes. I was like, I do not say things, anything to me.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  I, I meant to ask if in the encryption process, whether the sounds of plops getting encrypted too, but I guess, you know.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  I would love an audio file of that for myself.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  I would not.

• 39:32Ed Zitron?

  That's horrifying.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  I mean, I have strange thoughts.

• 39:35Ed Zitron?

  I think that there is a larger thing here, though, that this is a classic tech guy idea. It's like,

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:40Ed Zitron?

  what is an idea I'd have? Oh, I want to memorize everything that's happening around me and be able to analyze it and then do these insights. It's actually a very cruel way to live because we say things offhanded.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  Forgetting is, like, very important part of hu- and like, that's where I-

• 39:54Ed Zitron?

  But being fallible, our existence is not something that is written down in its entirety. And indeed, I don't know how useful it is having everything written down.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  So, it's not at all.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  A fun thing that I did.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Unless you're like, a researcher.

• 40:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  A hundred years from now is absolutely gonna know, love to know how V responded to her bowel movement.

• 40:12Ed Zitron?

  Oh my god, they're going after him.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Like, the anthropologist 200 years from now is gonna be like Ann Lister. They're just like, "Thank you for giving me all of this."

• 40:20Speaker 05

  They've listened to this and they're like, "We need to dig up Victoria's bowel now."

• 40:23Speaker 03

  And that's the only reason. Like, if you're an archivist, I'm so sorry.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Listen, okay?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  I, yeah, I, no, I didn't beat it.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  Anyway. Anyway, I, I would just like to note that I am a avid diarist and a journal, like, a journaler.

• 40:39Ed Zitron?

  I would have gone with another way of saying it personally.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  I heard diarrhea.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Oh, eh, fuck you guys. Anyway, I write in a diary daily. I journal daily.

• 40:50Ed Zitron?

  I also journal regularly.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  I journal regularly. So, um, this past month I have journaled every single day. And the things that I write down and that I remember as memorable are not always the same thing that this thing picked up. Because a lot of my thoughts and things that are important to me and memories that are, like, meaningful to me are completely silent. So, my, my, my philosophical question is if, if it doesn't happen out loud, if you have a society where we're all wearing these devices, if you say nothing out loud, does it count as your memory?

• 41:22Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  And this device would say, "No," because it can't know that from you.

• 41:26Ed Zitron?

  It's also a very crude analysis of memory itself. Human memory is insane.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 41:32Ed Zitron?

  Like, it's, the things we remember are done in chunks. The experience of being alive, at least for me, is, it's not like my thoughts, like, "And now I'm on a podcast, and now I'll say a thing." It's like, I did-

• 41:42Speaker 03

  There are apparently people who do things like that.

• 41:44Ed Zitron?

  Those people are, no, okay.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Wait, Sherlin, you think like this?

• 41:47Ed Zitron?

  What's it like to be normal?

• 41:48Speaker 04

  What's it like to have an internal monologue?

• 41:50Ed Zitron?

  I have one of those. It's just-

• 41:51Speaker 04

  I don't have an internal monologue.

• 41:52Ed Zitron?

  It's more adjacent to cornholio for me, but-

• 41:56Ed Zitron?

  Cornholionic. I actually, you mentioned something earlier though, Shelly, and I want to go back to, which is, you said this thing about feeling the need to document things around you. Can you go into, like, what is the thing pushing you to do that? Having to witness it?

• 42:09Speaker 05

  It's because I feel as if I, maybe in part of my life, I've talked to both of you about this before, where I encounter things and then I feel as if I get questioned about them afterwards and people don't believe me, right?

• 42:19Speaker 04

  As like journalism brain.

• 42:20Speaker 05

  It's journalism brain, it's microaggressions being thrown your way daily.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Being a lady.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  It's being a woman, it's like, the things that we have to think about all the time. So like, I feel as if, if I had a wearable microphone or camera on me all the time, this is why I reviewed the humane with great enthusiasm at first. It's, I feel as if, if one of those people who cat calls me across the street, I had, like, documented evidence of that and I could bring it up, like, how many times it happens a week, I could have, like, valuable knowledge on my hands to be like, when people question if I, if it really happens that much, I can be like, look at all these instances. So, for that reason, I have a lot of things that document parts of my life. I, to your point, Alex, I have phones that record a lot of my conversations when I feel they're important.

• 43:03Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  There's my security camera outside, I'm like, whatever, it captures promotion, I have it triggered on a motion sensor and it records everything and I'm like, I'll, I don't pay now for the backup that like, allows me to go back in time and look at them all the day, but like, if I did, I would sit there and look all the time.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  I think that experience is not every woman or every person who feels that way, but I don't know, something in my upbringing or my culture like, has led me to feel like

• 43:27Speaker 04

  There's, there's a fine line, because I do think that when you do that, when you are constantly reviewing the documents of your life, it can be not so great for your mental health.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely, it's not.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  It's like, my conclusion is that, like, part of being a human is understanding when you need to forget things and move on.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  And instead you're inviting-

• 43:49Speaker 04

  And I don't trust an AI to do that for me.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  A really poorly-

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Implemented, honestly, because of how, yeah, how badly it failed you.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  You're having a poorly implemented AI.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Intending to profit off of you in ways we still don't know, because fifty dollars to have that many AI like. Yeah, they're not making money. They're, they're burning cash. So where are they making their money?

• 44:12Speaker 04

  I think, I think there is plans down the line to have some sort of subscription.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Right now, there isn't one.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  That is the way of every single one of these products. We see this again and again and again. There's something that like really moves Silicon Valley and they get really, really excited. In this case, it's AI and they're like, how can we commodify this? How can, how can we, how can we make money off of this? How can I go and make money off of this? Shit, I think that all the time. I'm unemployed right now. Fire Alex Cranz, she's great. Yeah, awesome. But it's this constant thing. And then they release this product that is pretty terrible. You gave it a five. It is clearly not finished and it is for such a small group of the population. How on earth do they expect anyone in the normal world? Who, who's just out there existing, who goes to Walmart all the time and doesn't listen to podcasts all the time? Be like, yeah, I want to take this little fifty dollar thing that's gonna charge me money.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Monthly and wear this on my, and, and record everything I do. No normal person.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  No one would, no.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  No normal person. It is such, it is such brain worms. It's insane. That this is like.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Hey, but you have that a lot in like Silicon Valley, right? They, they only think about the positive of it and like.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  No, they don't, all they're thinking about.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  About the negatives.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  They're not thinking about the positive of it. Let's be really clear. They're not thinking about the positive of it. They're thinking about how can I make money off this? How can I grow?

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  That is, it is, it's growth at all cost thing.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  That is, and it's.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  And it's ruining this world. But like, I mean, when they market it, they tell you all the good things it can do, but they never like really get into the fact that like. This thing listened to me cry like pretty heavily after I got into a fight.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  And then I had to review the transcript and then look at it and then just like have it analyze how I was feeling. Cause it was like. The day was a sad one for Victoria.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  It's like when Amazon did tone. As someone who's recorded one of her own firings before, you don't want to listen to that stuff.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Oh, I've recorded a breakup before. That was great.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  You don't, you don't like, don't.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  I did it for legal reasons. That's unhinged, girl.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  You know me, I am unhinged.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. I want to like.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  You're lucky I haven't recorded all our conversations, honey. No, no, here's the thing, I will clarify that I record, I don't go and review every day. I think that that's really detrimental to your mental health. I do it for the like, the receipts. And, and, and in that breakup example, I don't think I actually recorded it. I wrote down every single word I could remember.

• 46:21Ed Zitron?

  And that's different, just to be clear.

• 46:23Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. I think that would be a huge invasion of privacy.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  I, I, I think what I'm really frustrated by is this is another example of a totally unfinished product. And we're seeing this again and again and again. We saw it with Apple this last week.

• 46:34Ed Zitron?

  Apple Intelligence.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  When you've got Gruber and German and a lot of these other people coming out there saying, hey, something's wrong with this.

• 46:39Ed Zitron?

  When you've got fucking Gruber being like, I don't like this.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  But, but, but, exactly. You've lost Gruber. That means you have, you've failed. And, and we're seeing that, like, if Apple is out there rushing a product when they know it's not ready.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  Especially Apple of all the companies.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Don't have all of the stuff.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  They, they don't have the use cases. It's, it's like what we saw with VR. I spent years covering VR, waiting for that big moment. And everybody said, it's just around the corner.

• 47:04Ed Zitron?

  Always around the fucking corner.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  Is it here yet?

• 47:06Speaker 03

  No. Okay, I just wanted to chat.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Why did you ask me? Is it because V is in her name?

• 47:10Speaker 03

  It's because she does a lot of VR coverage.

• 47:12Ed Zitron?

  It's Victoria Reality.

• 47:13Speaker 05

  Thank you, Victoria.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  I've seen her wear a lot of different glasses. A lot of smart glasses, which are...

• 47:19Ed Zitron?

  And also, the company that made this, by the way, the founding team came from Twitter.

• 47:24Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry.

• 47:25Ed Zitron?

  They helped ship Twitter Spaces, you know, that beloved product? And some sort of video chat app called Squad?

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:33Ed Zitron?

  Squad, the anti-bro startup is creating a safe space for teenage girls online. And, uh, wait a second, let's see who's, who founded this. Esther Corfred, I think she's the woman that helped Elon Musk. Anyway, point is, these fucking people don't care at all. They're not sitting there being like, how would this be helpful? Because, because the most helpful thing would make sure it was really focused. That it was able to discern a professional and a... But they probably can't do it because it isn't fucking possible. Ah, it's, it's just...

• 48:06Speaker 05

  If people cared about people, people with money cared about other people. We would be spending this money on cancer research where the NIH grants are being pulled and stalled right now. Or they would... Focus it on improving the healthcare system of this country, but people do not care. They care about taking their money and growing it for more money for themselves. That's it.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  It's just like, I don't expect people to suddenly become good people overnight, especially if they have money. But there is just like one thing where it's like, you have to at the very least create a good product experience for people. And the thing that frustrates me the most when I review products is that um, I feel like there's just this Pollyanna, Pollyanna-ish like view of what life is from these people in Silicon Valley. Where it's just like, I, I, I have had a life of great suffering.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  And they think it's like, yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  You know, I've been, I've been through a lot of shit, like both my parents died, my dog died, my entire fam- immediate family died in the last five years.

• 49:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh my god, I'm so sorry.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  It's fine. It's not, but it's fine. Uh, I have like a lot of, you know, traumatic stuff that has happened. And it's kind of changed my perspective of these kinds of devices because life is not pretty. There are just moments where, there are moments where it's very hard and where these sorts of to-dos. I can imagine a time where like when I was in the, the height of my grief, where I would have loved a thing to, to, to remind me to do stuff, to listen to the conversations that I was not processing to give me those to-dos. Like, there are moments, and I think there is a desire for something like that. That AI could ostensibly at some point when it actually works, a lot of, a lot of like asterisks here, that could help people.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  And I think if people want to pursue that, that's great. But you can't do it without acknowledging the fact that not every moment in your life is going to be pleasant. There are going to be embarrassing, there's going to be heartbreak, there's going to be these negative experiences that you don't necessarily want summarized to you in a way that you're gonna have to review and feel did, did your ex gaslight you? Guess what? The AI is gonna gaslight you about how it get, how that horrible douche gaslit you.

• 50:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  And like that kind of thing is just not necessarily great. And you get it across so many different categories.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Put on my, my business person hat. It's not just bad.

• 50:27Ed Zitron?

  She's putting it on.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  I know.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  She's literally.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  It's a bad hat.

• 50:30Ed Zitron?

  It's a big top hat.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  It's a little top hat. Let me get my monocle out.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  It's not just it's bad for for people. It's a bad product.

• 50:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Like, like, let's be clear. A lot of these products, we've seen again and again and again, trying to do AI, trying to make it. Google's done some decent work in this space with with decent. But most of these these products continue to be bad. They continue to be searching.

• 50:52Ed Zitron?

  I'm sorry, I gotta push back on that. Like what with Google? I'm sorry.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Notebook LM alone is impressive as fuck.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  There was that thing where you could like, you could like erase a person out of a picture.

• 51:03Speaker 05

  Oh, magic eraser.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was that's nice.

• 51:06Ed Zitron?

  That's not generative AI, though.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is. It's generating.

• 51:09Ed Zitron?

  Is that generative?

• 51:10Speaker 03

  It's generating that sky.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  It's not in the era of, so Google's done that before the rise of.

• 51:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  What else did it do?

• 51:17Ed Zitron?

  This is, by the way, this is also the industry that the entire economy is built on top of, just to be clear. And these are some of the most well-credentialed tech people, and we're all just going, fuck, what, why?

• 51:28Speaker 05

  Well, so, hang on, pause, pause. I I want to pivot to all of that by saying there is a good product that's that's built to help people feel better. You're pointing at me.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  For for AI?

• 51:38Speaker 05

  No, not AI. That's the thing.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  That's, no, this, I want to talk about.

• 51:40Speaker 05

  You want to talk about.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  It's like a Mexican standoff of pointing happening right now.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Pointing at each other so hard.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  We really were.

• 51:46Ed Zitron?

  They are, really. They're doing the Spider.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  We were the Spider-Man.

• 51:49Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but they're not similar. They just.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Okay, no, but Sherlin, make your point.

• 51:52Ed Zitron?

  Anyway.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:53Ed Zitron?

  Wait, who's going?

• 51:54Speaker 05

  I was gonna go.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Sherlin's point.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  I have been using this app. I I encountered it through a coworker who wrote about it for us. It's called Finch. It's an app that's like a self-care app.

• 52:04Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  It's the one with the like, the little animal, the little birdy.

• 52:07Speaker 05

  So by taking care of yourself, you're taking care of this pet, you're helping it grow. And what it is, is these the most gentle suggestions of to-dos in a day. Whether it is as simple as get out of bed, brush your teeth, drink water, you complete them, you get points, you grow your pet, whatever. It's a gentle reminder of things you want to do throughout the day, and you can reward yourself. And it is developed by, and here's the crucial difference, two independent developers that were college buddies that were just trying to help motivate each other. And I think that is an example I can point to of tech being able to help people, because I also read the subreddit.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  I mean, that is a great, that is a great example, and and a lot of different things there. It was. It's two people, it's not seeking.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  And it's not, it doesn't sound like it's using a lot of generative AI.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  It has a point. It is a very focused product with a core mission in mind of helping people. And that is something I can stand by.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and but I think most of these products we're seeing is particularly in the AI market.

• 53:04Speaker 05

  Especially from the big companies and the VCs.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  They they are, everybody is out just doing this money grab. Everybody's just saying, how do I grab this?

• 53:11Speaker 05

  Because the motivation is different.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Of course, they're asking that. And and what what are they all doing? Why are they all doing this? They're all trying to chase the iPhone. They're all trying to chase something that happened in two thousand seven. And let's point out, in two thousand seven, the iPhone was a way more, even in its shittiest state, two thousand seven, was a way more well thought out, well produced product than any of the products.

• 53:34Ed Zitron?

  And it also fixed really big. I got the original iPhone. I was a little nerd, I didn't have friends, but I did have money saved up from writing. And I bought it, and I remember showing people visual voicemail, and people going, holy shit, that's amazing, because voicemail at the time was this defunct product where you had to like dial in and hit a button.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  I do miss recording my voicemail message though. I do, it's cute as hell.

• 53:56Ed Zitron?

  Can barely understand me half the fucking time, so unless I'm on this show, I hope. But like you could send text messages and it didn't involve you doing like the weird hitting the numbers thing.

• 54:08Ed Zitron?

  It's just intention, right?

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. Right now, all we are doing is we are creating things and everybody's sitting around saying, wow, I wish that, you know a universal problem? Everybody wants to chronicle every moment of their life. Sherlin does.

• 54:27Speaker 05

  I sure do.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, Sherlin.

• 54:30Ed Zitron?

  You actually don't. You want to chronicle important moments at some point. You don't want to chronicle every moment.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  No.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  And also, no offense, Sherlin is one person.

• 54:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I am the most important, but I am one person. You are one person.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  You are, like, that is a very small group of people, and they're like, everybody wants to do this.

• 54:49Ed Zitron?

  I think there is a much higher level problem, though, which is, they are not being like, oh, you know what people have problems with? Remembering things. They're like, yeah, we can't fucking fix that. We actually can't fix that. Like, we can't, we can't fix that. Well, people have problems with communication. Yeah, well, we really also can't fix that. What can we do? Record everything and hope something fucking comes out? I don't know. These worms with their money, give it to me.

• 55:12Speaker 05

  I feel like they took the nugget of a good idea, which is, you have been saying, the glimmer of a good idea, and then stuffed, they needed money to make the good idea work, and the only way to get that money is to say AI is the way.

• 55:22Ed Zitron?

  And I agree. I think there's also another step, which is, they actually can't do the good idea. I don't think they're capable of doing it, because the good idea would be like, hey, listen to what's going on and just tell me what things you think I might forget. It can't do that, because the only thing they can do is have a big sludge of information, chuck it at a large language model, and hope something comes out, other than like, I don't want to watch the Garbo movie, which is a quote from your article.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  Yes, the Garbo movie was, it ends with us, from my very 90-minute-long slant of how I don't want to watch that.

• 55:51Ed Zitron?

  My cat Babu, I talk to him like a person. It's gonna be like, you told Babu-

• 55:56Speaker 04

  I also talked to my cat as a person, and it said that I had a rough-and-tumble ride with them discussing childhood memories, because it mentioned my cat, Petey.

• 56:06Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  And I'm like, Petey's my cat, and I was talking to the cat, and I say, oh, who's our little baby? Who's innocent, innocent, innocent little manish? No, it just said that I have a dog named Edie.

• 56:18Speaker 05

  Oh, great.

• 56:19Ed Zitron?

  Nailed it.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:20Ed Zitron?

  No, it would be like Hal, saying to her, like, Ed has talked to Hal, who he calls Mr. Beautiful, and Mr. Fluffy.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:26Ed Zitron?

  And he really is. He acts like the most beautiful cat in the world, and he is.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  I would imagine your fact-tinder would say Ed knows someone named Mr. Beautiful, and he is fluffy, or something like that.

• 56:35Ed Zitron?

  Mr. Perfect, Mr. Beautiful, and so on. It's just, and I think that's what it really is. We all are coming up with, like, distinct problems that can be solved, and this is not what large language models do, and it's very difficult to get them to do specific things, as proven by the fact that none of the products exist.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  You can't solve being human.

• 56:52Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  That's the thing, is like, we're all human.

• 57:05Speaker 00

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• 58:07Speaker 05

  I said this in a previous episode with you at the CES episode where I don't even think robotics need to be humanoid in nature.

• 58:11Ed Zitron?

  Yes, it's not an efficient form of body.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Exactly, or of repetitive movement, that's it.

• 58:17Ed Zitron?

  And also, they're not even making the, like, so much of this, what frustrates me, even with the Kevin Roos thing, it's like, no real problem solved. What could a conscious, an AGI could theoretically listen without recording and go, okay, I think you might need a reminder on this because I know you. These motherfuckers, actually, that is the ultimate problem with this. It doesn't know you at all. It actually doesn't know you.

• 58:37Speaker 05

  Because it's like, it's actually human.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  That actually reminds me of when I was testing the MetaRay Band Live AI. What?

• 58:45Speaker 05

  She had hair.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  Oh, I had hair.

• 58:47Ed Zitron?

  She's pulling a hair off.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  It just bugged me.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  But I was testing that, and so it's a live AI, it's multimodal, it can look at what you're looking at, and you can ask it questions, and it'll see what you're seeing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are actual use cases for that. I've had many, many blind and low-vision people reach out to me saying that that could change their lives.

• 59:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 59:05Ed Zitron?

  Which is cool.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Create something good. That is good. But, you know, the demos that they were like suggesting that I try or whatnot, I I looked

• 59:08Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  at my room and I was like, tell me how I could make this room look less sad, basically. And they're like, oh, you could put art up, you could have a plant, you could have some rugs. And I was like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ. So you could just go.

• 59:25Ed Zitron?

  Again.

• 59:25Speaker 04

  What art?

• 59:26Ed Zitron?

  You could text any like random white guy and they'd be like, oh, fucking no.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  I was like, what? Yeah, what type of art? What art should I, should I use? Put, put a rainy forest. I had no, I had to ask like five or six different questions, just digging and digging and digging for this AI to suggest an artist. I asked my best friend, she said, you would love XYZ. I loved XYZ. I bought it immediately.

• 59:48Ed Zitron?

  It's not even contextually intelligent. It doesn't have, it doesn't look around and go, okay, looking at the format of this room. It's just frustrating because it is the, it's the info slop. It just, it is just collecting data and going.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  See, I actually, I was telling Sherlin about this earlier. I had a great moment where um, somebody was like, oh yeah, I use Claude AI as a therapist. And I was like, you're unhinged. I love you.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  And so I was like, I'm gonna talk to Claude AI. And I was talking to it and I was, you know, I was telling her about how things were going and everything.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  And I was like, I would really like it if you would recommend a book to me that that kind of speaks to the experiences I'm having right now. And immediately it was like Goldfinch. And I was like.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  Goldfinch?

• 1:00:25Ed Zitron?

  I'm not familiar with this.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  I've read that book. Why that book?

• 1:00:29Ed Zitron?

  What is this book about?

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  So this book is a Bill Dung's Roman from Donna Tartt, author of Secret History, is about this little boy named Theo, whose mom like dies in a terrorist attack at the Met and he like steals a piece of art. Just like me. It goes through his life of just being like, well, I have money problems. Alex, the resemblance is uncanny. And I'm obsessed with a manic pixie dream girl. Oh, that's true. Girl in the thing. And then I do a bunch of crime. And at the end of the book, he's just like, well, I've made life decisions.

• 1:01:02Ed Zitron?

  Average bet, rough line listener. No, anyway.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  It was like, I read, I looked at that and I was like, well, this is a terrible fucking suggestion. And so I said, okay, suggest a movie to me. And it goes Silver Linings Playbook. And I was like.

• 1:01:15Ed Zitron?

  Kids.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  And, and honestly, it was the best moment in my entire experience with this thing. Because before that, I'd been like, wow, this starts to get me. And I started almost like, believe the AI understood me, even though I know for a fact it's stupid and it doesn't. And then it said Goldfinch and Silver Linings Playbook. And I was like, oh, right.

• 1:01:31Speaker 05

  You're still wrong.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  You are a stupid robot. You are incapable of making the connections that humans make. And you are so far from it.

• 1:01:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  That you would recommend these to me. Because all you did was you saw on the internet, someone said Goldfinch. And, and self-actualization or some shit.

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  And, and so clearly, it's gonna do your.

• 1:01:48Ed Zitron?

  It's when you vectorize every fucking fact and bit of data and you go just, this is just like, human beings.

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  Sign three tags and then you're like, yeah.

• 1:01:54Ed Zitron?

  You're a relational database with legs.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I loved that moment because it immediately said, oh, yeah, this is a fucking robot.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  You're going close to something that's not real.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and immediately pulled me out of it. I was like, this is hysterical. I love this thing. And, and, and I stopped using it for a minute because it like immediately.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  It broke you out of the illusion.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  It broke me out of that illusion. And I loved that moment because it reminded me. These things suck. They're not human.

• 1:02:18Speaker 05

  Well, well, hang on, hang on. There was a point up until that, that you were like, this doesn't suck though.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Oh, no. Yeah, I love it. Like I said, I love this thing because it is a big, it's like a horoscope.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  The validation machine.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a big validation machine. And just like a horoscope, it makes me feel pretty. And then it recommends Silver Linings Playbook or Goldfinch. And I reminded that it's a horoscope.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  This was.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, go on.

• 1:02:37Ed Zitron?

  No, no, you were saying something.

• 1:02:38Speaker 05

  I was just going to say that this was a point in the conversation we were having just now, Alex, where you and I were both like, it is all still logic programming. It is all still input, output. And as much and as sophisticated as the output seems, it is still input, output, which is the basis of most computing.

• 1:02:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  And it's like, until it's so-called things for itself, that AGI question isn't there, like the, the two, three years ago.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  And it's not gonna be capable of that.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  It's not, it's never going to be because it takes the human brain to be capable of that.

• 1:03:04Ed Zitron?

  It also is not doing what, we don't even understand intelligence, but it is relational data, but it's very, very complex. And I realize someone's gonna listen to it going, it's not a relational data. Shut the fuck, go outside. But it's, it's like, it's relational things. It's just looking and going, well, based on what you've said, I think this. And I don't, and as a thing with no experiences, I'm gonna say. Fucking short, like it's Goldfinch.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  It's about growth, it's about life, therefore assigned it to Alex.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Emotions, like, we don't even understand emotions.

• 1:03:37Ed Zitron?

  You're not even smart enough to be like, how's moving castle, which would cheer me up anytime.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, if it had said that, I would have been like, damn, I wouldn't be here right now, because I'd still be just talking to Claude AI. We'd be getting married, we'd have a date.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  She has been sending me screenshots of like the Claude, and I'm just like, haha, I love that for you, girl.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  But it's also like, I'm monitoring, because if you get too crazy and do it, I'm just gonna be like, it's not real.

• 1:04:02Speaker 05

  I know of people who use it, and I've read of cases on Reddit where people use it as their mental health replacement, like the therapist standard, and it's not. I think we are aware it's not. I worry for the people out there who are not, who are talking to ChatGPT like it's their partner or their doctor.

• 1:04:19Ed Zitron?

  Was just thinking this.

• 1:04:22Speaker 05

  That's the New York Times audience.

• 1:04:23Ed Zitron?

  This is why, actually connects to why I'm so pissed off at Kevin, he should know better. But a lot of people don't. The reason that I think a lot of right wing YouTubers have taken over like how men think is because a lot of people are just looking for something to tell them what they want to hear. And this is the biggest machine to do that in the world.

• 1:04:38Speaker 05

  Validation you were talking about will validate them.

• 1:04:40Ed Zitron?

  And not challenging at all. It's not, it might challenge you in the most gentle way.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Uh, it never challenged me, it just told me I was great.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  And then although it told me like areas I could slightly improve.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  Oh, like a performance review.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  I can get rid of my typos it told me, and then I'll win a Pulitzer.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  Oh my god, I tell you that all the time.

• 1:04:58Ed Zitron?

  These motherfuckers love to tell people they're gonna win Pulitzer.

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  I know, it's really honest.

• 1:05:03Ed Zitron?

  I have tried, by the way, to use it like a mental health thing. And I've had to just be like, be ruder. Bush back, and it can barely do it, cannot fucking keep up with my swag, I just demolish it. I just, I brutalize it, it's got nothing.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  There's like this Korean term called nunchi, and it means it. It's it means like you should be able to read a room. Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence. It's like Nunchi. It's like I I like that. I'm not good at translating, but it's like I power or something like that.

• 1:05:31Ed Zitron?

  That's cool.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  And so like Korean parents will will tell you like, oh, what you don't you have Nunchi? It's because you should be able to look at a room and see what's going on, see what people are saying, read between the lines and make conclusions based on that. AI can't do that.

• 1:05:45Ed Zitron?

  But that and that's exactly the problem that being exactly the problem of large language models. It literally cannot read the room. All it can do is read this blob of text, this thing and go, based on all of the training I've done from stealing the internet, I think that you will win a Pulitzer or you or.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Or like syntaxically, your writing is similar to someone who has won a Pulitzer, so.

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  Just comparing, yeah.

• 1:06:08Ed Zitron?

  And that's all that it is. It's just just similar. Each year, the Pulitzer looks for like the most similar thing to last year.

• 1:06:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Ed Zitron?

  Because that's how human beings make.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  And it's only a chapter and it's like that chapter when you a Pulitzer.

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Ed Zitron?

  But when you ask it, it's like, I never stole anything. Um, Shalit, so you covered the, I actually have somehow missed this because I didn't want to know. Uh, the Alexa AI, what are they fucking doing? The Alexa Plus?

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  Man.

• 1:06:32Ed Zitron?

  What are these people? I I read an interview with Neelai Patel and I didn't get any information, so if you could tell me.

• 1:06:39Speaker 05

  Um, with Panos Panay, I'm assuming the new hardware chief at or senior vice president, I think, of devices and services at Amazon. Anyway, um, got a chance to speak with him and also did an interview where I basically learned nothing because Panos is that kind of an enigma, by the way. He just talks.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  Uh, he is charming.

• 1:06:56Ed Zitron?

  I think enigma is a very kind way of saying guy who doesn't say anything despite his paycheck, but.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  Fair enough.

• 1:07:02Ed Zitron?

  That's my opinion.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  I I that's media training and I have to admit that I tend to be suckered in by that. I'm the sort of person who will fall for that.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  He's got impeccable media.

• 1:07:09Ed Zitron?

  These people never come on this show. They they will never.

• 1:07:12Speaker 05

  So so Alexa, um, and apologies to everyone that has an echo speaker. Please go mute your speakers right now. But, um, Alexa Plus is the redesign version of that assistant that Amazon's been promising forever, right? So it's been like, uh, we're going to use LLMs. We're going to use generative to make a more conversational language flow between you and the assistant and you can pause yourself in between talking or speaking your comments or like correct yourself mid-sentence or say a lot of things and not use contextual like follow-up questions and that sort of thing.

• 1:07:40Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:07:41Speaker 05

  And it should process that is supposed to be like very, um. Handle complex tasks where you can stack tasks, you can also what I found.

• 1:07:47Ed Zitron?

  What kind of tasks?

• 1:07:48Speaker 05

  Ah, so like, uh, uh, oh, um, no, look at my, um, Ring camera feed and see if any like huskies showed up or if anybody walked my dog, um, today or something, that sort of thing. Um, still simplistic in nature. Can it set multiple timers? It, you know what? Here's the thing. At the event, we had a hands-on quote in, in air quotes because we didn't actually get hands-on. We were just shown a lot of demos and we're, it felt very rehearsed. I don't like that sort of event. I don't call it hands-on because we didn't use it ourselves. So anyway, um.

• 1:08:18Ed Zitron?

  Eyes on.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Eyes on. I, I was most intrigued, however, by Amazon's promise of how it's going to integrate with their party services, which is one of the things that these assistants are historically very bad at. The agentic. Exactly.

• 1:08:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but wait, wait, wait. We've heard the, that word now.

• 1:08:33Speaker 05

  I don't like agentic. It's not. It's, it's. Isn't this the same thing?

• 1:08:36Ed Zitron?

  What does it do?

• 1:08:37Speaker 05

  Yes. Web forms. So let's set aside the agentic question, uh, for a moment and talk about the third-party integration. Yes, Panos, what does it do? Uh, but I hope I'm more, I'm talking concrete terms. Yes. Uh, sorry, Panos. Uh, there's three parts that, uh, Daniel Roche Bosch, uh, their VP, I apologize for the last name thing, um, mentioned. So one was the APIs, right? It will work with people that it knows are its partners with Uber, Spotify, et cetera, to API into its assistant so that you can say something like, oh, get me an Uber for whatever, or get me a, this is a lot. Just be very natural with how you talk to your assistant. The second is, uh, agentic. So it's gonna have, this was funny to me, Alexa, a chatbot, talk to other chatbots on the internet

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  and they will just talk to each other on your behalf.

• 1:09:24Ed Zitron?

  Shelly, I respect the shit out of you, but I must say, you just said the magic words of it will do.

• 1:09:31Speaker 05

  Uh, it's supposed to.

• 1:09:32Ed Zitron?

  That's the thing.

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  It claims, listen, I, Ed, Ed, you get out of my face because I write, I write carefully.

• 1:09:39Ed Zitron?

  I know you do.

• 1:09:40Speaker 05

  There's a lot of hand movements going on. When I speak, I don't edit after. Anyway, um, it's supposed to.

• 1:09:50Ed Zitron?

  I do sound like that.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's supposed to. I don't use British. Um, now where was I?

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 05

  It's supposed to have the assistants talk to each other. We've seen no demonstrations of this. Well, I mean, we saw an onstage demo.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  But again, here's my question.

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  Can order an Uber.

• 1:10:06Speaker 05

  Yes. Or, or you can order food through Amazon Fresh, for example.

• 1:10:10Ed Zitron?

  Who wants to do this?

• 1:10:11Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 05

  Who wants to do this? Because if I'm gonna ask it to order an Uber, is it gonna be like Siri where I asked it to call my mom and it called my aunt that I haven't talked to in 15 years and they have totally different names?

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Supposed to be better.

• 1:10:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but how can you even call an Uber on it?

• 1:10:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're gonna call an Uber. You're supposed to say, so here's, here's, here's the demo they gave, and I'm sure, I think that was what Victoria was gonna get through. Um, the demo they gave were like, oh, what was that restaurant I liked? And then like Alexa Plus will be like, blah, blah, blah. Oh, um, make me a reservation at that second one. So instead of having to like, whatever, right?

• 1:10:40Ed Zitron?

  That's almost useful, other than...

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. A lot of, a lot of assistants are supposed to get close to doing that, too.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Except for you're expected to put your trust.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  Yes, that it will get it correctly.

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  From every single point of that. And it is not capable of that. You have to build that trust.

• 1:10:54Ed Zitron?

  More for this, yes?

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  Well, no, no, no. Prime, prime, um, subscribers get it for free. You have to pay if you're not a prime subscriber, which like... Right.

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  One of the, one of the demos, like, so I wasn't there, but I was listening through, uh, an audio feed.

• 1:11:07Speaker 05

  I was streaming the feed to my team.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  So, um, basically, um, there was like one demo where it was like, oh, uh, can you find me tickets to this, uh, Red Sox game for... Oh, that's a little too pricey. Can you set an alert?

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  And, uh, basically David was like, I already found tickets for that exact game for $56 online.

• 1:11:26Speaker 05

  Right. You can do it faster by Googling.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  Yourself. And then there's also just like, oh, you know, tell me what time so and so's flight is coming in. Okay, send an Uber to pick them up.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  This kind of feels like...

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  That's not how Uber at JFK works.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  Right, right, right. Exactly. It kind of feels like this was designed for mid-level executives who can't afford their own assistance.

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:11:45Ed Zitron?

  This sounds like it was designed to do this fucking event.

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  I guess so.

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Ed Zitron?

  This just sounds like it was, they designed enough things to demo an event.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  I agree with you.

• 1:11:53Ed Zitron?

  No, I'm not criticizing you, just to be clear.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  I, I want to point out that I was getting to a point, which is that none of this was interesting to me because it's been done slash been attempted to be done slash you can do it better yourself.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  Google's been doing this for five years.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  It's big, big difference.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  And it didn't work. Yeah. Google was, was notably a big phony when it did it. When it had the, the...

• 1:12:12Ed Zitron?

  DuPlex?

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Was it, was it the AI that called?

• 1:12:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, the restaurant reservation duplex.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Fake.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know, because I haven't looked at it myself.

• 1:12:21Ed Zitron?

  I just never could find that in the wild.

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  I have used it myself to get them to call Mala Project.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, great restaurant.

• 1:12:29Speaker 05

  To make a reservation.

• 1:12:30Ed Zitron?

  I just like, I keep coming back to this thought of, who is this actually for? Because I don't know, the way I live my life is not like I'm like, what's that restaurant I like? And I need to make a reservation at the restaurant that I like enough to make a reservation, but not enough to remember it.

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  You're getting to a point that I've had with, a problem that I've had with AI is that, you know, you have to know how to prompt it.

• 1:12:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:12:53Ed Zitron?

  Great.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  The things that you want.

• 1:12:54Speaker 05

  That's what Amazon's trying to solve with the new Alexa thing.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  Trying to solve.

• 1:12:58Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Because like.

• 1:12:59Speaker 05

  Which I, I'm sorry, I had a long conversation with someone else about this.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  Alexa invented that type of.

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. So you get us to learn how to talk to our assistants in a very specific way. Now you want us to talk naturally to it as if that's not learning a whole other type of behavior?

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  It's just a whole language.

• 1:13:12Speaker 05

  As if it's going to work like I'm talking to my friends. It's not. I can get like all kinds of incense about this.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  I remember, I was testing, what was it? I got a demo of Project Astra back at audio.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 04

  And I was just like talking to it and they were like, no, no, you can talk normal.

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  And Project Astra. Yes, you have to remember.

• 1:13:28Speaker 04

  I have like thirteen.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  From Google.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Frickin', frickin' years of going, hey, Google, sorry, hey, Google, Alexa. You know, like that exact.

• 1:13:38Ed Zitron?

  Siri, play Oingo Born Go. Little girls.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  I am so excited for a bunch of your listeners.

• 1:13:44Ed Zitron?

  They punish me every day with.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  You need a warning at the start of this episode to mute all your devices, I think.

• 1:13:49Ed Zitron?

  I will be warning nobody.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  No one should be warned.

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  Just so, just so it's clear, this is Ed's fault.

• 1:13:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is all Ed's fault. Better production.

• 1:13:55Ed Zitron?

  I am reckless. It is my fault.

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  It's on your listeners for listening without the headphones.

• 1:13:59Ed Zitron?

  I will get someone to beep it out if I remember, which I won't.

• 1:14:01Speaker 05

  There you go. Sorry, we ummed at the same time. I was gonna say, yeah, Project Astra is interesting. I don't know if it'll work yet, but Astra is Google's like experimental implementation of Gemini, where like you can use your phone's camera to point it around the room and then it'll remember things it saw, even if it's not in the frame right there.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  And I want to be really clear about something. If I had a dollar for every single time a tech exec said, multi-modal.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  I'm just like, it's rich. I want to be really clear on something. They have been, they've been promising this stuff for 15 years at this point. Alexa came out in what, 2014? Or yeah, 2014, that's when they first announced this? There's a big reason we haven't seen huge changes, even with fairly good generative AI and fairly good large language models that can listen to us and really understand our speech. And that is because. Computers still can't process all the stuff because if you and I are both in the same room and you're asking Alexa for that restaurant and I'm saying, no, no, no, don't forget the restaurant.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  You can only do with one stream of data at a time.

• 1:14:58Ed Zitron?

  Okay, here's, here's an article from The Verge. June 13, 2016, Apple Opens Up Siri to App Developers. This shit is nearly here for a fucking decade.

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  So, I mean, look, I, I will, I take, I will take note against that, like, uh, nothing has changed because I think the Echo speaker alone has changed the way a lot of people think of this.

• 1:15:18Ed Zitron?

  What does it do?

• 1:15:19Speaker 05

  I speak to my speaker a lot. I do like, it's hands-free control, smart home control.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  It's also for elderly people, people who are alone.

• 1:15:29Speaker 05

  Yes. People with accessibility issues, mobility issues, they can use that and it works well and they're working with Voice it to make it better for people with speech impediments.

• 1:15:37Ed Zitron?

  And I agree, that sounds great.

• 1:15:38Speaker 05

  It is important.

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  But it's, it's, no, I, I think, I think voice control is super important.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  I don't mean Alexa.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  I will say, all of these products currently are not as good as what they suggest.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  They are not that helpful for the elderly.

• 1:15:50Speaker 05

  No, they constantly make promises.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  Like, there's, there's that measure of comfort.

• 1:15:53Ed Zitron?

  They sow their oats on things like, and you're right to say that, by the way, but they're like, oh, you can't hate this because the elderly might.

• 1:16:00Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  No, no, no, you can.

• 1:16:02Speaker 05

  You absolutely should.

• 1:16:03Ed Zitron?

  I can and I will, I'm doing it right now.

• 1:16:04Speaker 04

  It's not universal, right? It's like smart glasses, when they first came out, everyone was like, fuck that.

• 1:16:08Speaker 05

  Oh, but everybody thought Google Glass was cute, though.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:16:12Speaker 05

  Still my LinkedIn picture, anyway.

• 1:16:13Speaker 04

  No, anyway, uh, just like.

• 1:16:15Ed Zitron?

  Scuttled in the shower.

• 1:16:16Speaker 04

  But it had use cases in enterprise for a long time and that's where it thrived because it had a specific use case for a specific time.

• 1:16:24Ed Zitron?

  But here's the thing.

• 1:16:25Speaker 05

  And it was too expensive for them.

• 1:16:26Ed Zitron?

  And how often was it actually used for that? Because that's the thing, they always say, it's got play in the enterprise. How much play? How much revenue? How much use?

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  Do you know how many people are putting on a HoloLens right now to turn some sort of wrench on a pipe?

• 1:16:42Ed Zitron?

  Like like zeros.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  No, that's that's also. But for a minute there, but like there's nothing wrong with some of this tech just being very use case specific.

• 1:16:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  And just exploring it that way. If they were selling it on that, if they were being honest about that. But they're making it something for everybody.

• 1:17:00Speaker 05

  Right, cuz that's how they make the money that they want to make.

• 1:17:02Ed Zitron?

  But they don't even make the money now.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  Well, that's how they're supposed to.

• 1:17:03Ed Zitron?

  Alexis lost billions of dollars.

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  But they don't even like acknowledge.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  It's not that, it's to get a higher valuation from the stock market. It's all just for investors to be like, well, they're gonna do something in 20 years. I mean, that's the entire reason Elon Musk is in our faces.

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Also, like, what was the other thing that came out this week? That they're gonna add like live translations to the AirPods possibly and all of that sort of stuff.

• 1:17:26Ed Zitron?

  Which I think is already on Google.

• 1:17:28Speaker 04

  It's already on the.

• 1:17:29Ed Zitron?

  Basically, I go to our friend at the show right to me.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  They talk about how like AI can enable live translation all the time. I've tested a bunch of live translation stuff and it's only good for like, where is the bathroom?

• 1:17:41Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:17:41Speaker 04

  Here is your bill.

• 1:17:42Speaker 05

  It's not good for real conversations.

• 1:17:44Speaker 04

  You are supposed to have real conversations and I wrote about this when the Humane came out and absolutely could not for its life, translate a single fucking thing I said as like a semi multilingual person.

• 1:17:53Ed Zitron?

  And how would you know it's wrong if you don't speak the fucking language?

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  That too, but then like, you know, the other thing is, is just like, there are times where I wish there had some sort of like, AI translator in my life.

• 1:18:05Speaker 05

  Universal translator thing.

• 1:18:07Ed Zitron?

  That you could trust.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  That I could trust, like when my mom was sick, the thing that they don't tell you about neurodegenerative diseases is that you will lose your second language as it happens. So my mom lost her ability to speak English. My father lost his ability to speak English as well. They raised me so that I did not speak Korean well. I can understand it, but I can only say like, begle pa, I'm hungry.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  So they could understand you, but you can't.

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  And then get them to understand you. So like my family, I mean, we operate as if I am Chewbacca, the English speaking Chewbacca and everyone else speaks Korean. And we understand each other. I am Korean Chewbacca in my family, but in any case.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Just give me a phrase in Korean Chewbacca that would be.

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  Like, I'll just be like, so actually, I, like, my Korean is such that in my brain that, like, one time I was in a taxi cab with non-Korean speakers, um, and he was asking us a question, and I understood him, and I told him where to go. I don't know the words I used, but I told him where to go accurately, and my friends were like, "You lying bitch, you speak Korean." And I was like, "No, I, I really can't."

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  You just blacked out.

• 1:19:07Speaker 04

  I blacked out, and I just told him where to go.

• 1:19:09Speaker 05

  Oh, it's like when Ron used parcel tongue in Chamber of Secrets.

• 1:19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it's like, that's my Korean.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  No, no, no, Ron did it in Final Deathly Hallows.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Anyway, but like, me speaking Korean is just like...

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  There we go. I agree.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  But yeah, no, so like, when you get to the, the translation thing, it can't do slang. It can't do the fact that, like...

• 1:19:28Speaker 05

  Of course, yeah. I will, I will, I will admit, when I did talk to the humane AI in Cantonese, it did do colloquial better than any other language translator I've used, which is hilarious.

• 1:19:36Ed Zitron?

  It feels like translation, though, is the most obvious one where it can't fail. Because the nuances of language, and I, so I have a coordination disability, dyspraxia, spatial awareness, it really affects my ability to learn languages because structural concepts not so good. So, learning, I couldn't learn French, couldn't learn, I failed French, Latin, German, Spanish. I'm a, like, the school kept throwing them at me, it's like, "Ha ha, fuck you."

• 1:20:00Speaker 05

  You're really good at failing, I love that.

• 1:20:01Ed Zitron?

  No, I'm like the fail master, and it was because, like, the way English works is very different. Also, I didn't care, I was very depressed, but it really was the structural stuff, like, trying to learn another language when you don't get those concepts. And I imagine large language models also have this problem.

• 1:20:16Speaker 04

  And then, add to the fact that not all languages are higher, like, English is a very low-context language, and Asian languages are high-context.

• 1:20:24Ed Zitron?

  I don't even know what that means!

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  So what that means is, like, um...

• 1:20:26Speaker 05

  A lot of things are unsaid, basically.

• 1:20:27Speaker 04

  A lot of things are unsaid, uh, a lot of, um, things are, like, how you talk to a person in Japanese and Korean, which are my, my languages that I studied, depends on, are they older than you? You're gonna talk to them differently if they're older than you.

• 1:20:41Ed Zitron?

  And there's no way for the language to express that?

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  Um, no, there is, you're gonna be using things in that to express that, or like, if you, if I say something to you in Japanese, and I'm just like, uh, so, classic business example that they give for Japanese is, you ask a yes or no question, and they go like, "Ooh, that might be difficult, that means no."

• 1:20:59Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  Oh, Singlish is like this. Singlish has a saying called "Can is can," which means it can't be done. Like, it's in, "You can, you can do this?" "Yeah, you can!" Yeah. Yeah, you can. That's the sort of thing.

• 1:21:11Ed Zitron?

  Wait, how the fuck am I meant to?

• 1:21:12Speaker 05

  How is LLM meant to pick? Yeah, you can up.

• 1:21:14Speaker 04

  How is it supposed to know that?

• 1:21:15Ed Zitron?

  It can't.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  Well, this is why not everyone at the UN is wearing a bee at the moment.

• 1:21:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

  Or, or the Google headphones.

• 1:21:22Speaker 04

  Or Pixelbuds or whatever, yeah.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  This is why they have real human translators. We see these, we see this translating stuff work.

• 1:21:27Ed Zitron?

  But you can't, you're paying for the trust.

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, you, you have to pay for the trust because Google Translate is really, really great if I need to go double check something, but if there was ever a time where I needed to be like, hey, I need to know what this is in Japanese, I am not asking Google Translate.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  I'm texting V. Very basic things. Like if you're saying like, oh, I have, oh, so another thing was like, I would have friends visit me when I lived in Japan and they would be like, oh, I can't eat this for, uh, cause I'm a vegan. I was like, we can't say that you're a vegan. They won't understand that.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, Mandarin, we don't have that either.

• 1:21:57Speaker 04

  You have to say that you have an allergy to meat and then they'll take it out for you.

• 1:22:01Ed Zitron?

  And that is.

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  Well, we have vegetarian.

• 1:22:02Speaker 05

  Psychological allergy.

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Ed Zitron?

  See, this is the thing that drives me insane about all of this, cause we're looking at Robert to hate and Kevin Roos's work. But it's like, these people vigorously beating off about AGI. It's like, based on an entire industry of people saying, yeah, it sort of works, but it doesn't. And by the way, it burns billions of dollars. And by the way, will it get better?

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:24Ed Zitron?

  Probably not, but it will. My company is so powerful and strong and so weak and sick, it's the best thing ever, but also is dying.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  And this is exactly what they said with VR. They said, you know what? Give it a minute. If we just, if we just keep going, everybody's gonna, everybody's gonna be doing VR. Everybody's gonna be moving on to AR. And it doesn't happen because they're trying to force something. It's not the phone.

• 1:22:45Ed Zitron?

  But it's kind of like.

• 1:22:46Speaker 03

  Give up.

• 1:22:46Ed Zitron?

  But it's kind of like VR in the sense that like, for VR to work in the Ready Player One thing, which is fucking insane. If you want Ready Player One to be real.

• 1:22:52Speaker 04

  I like how that's your touch point.

• 1:22:54Ed Zitron?

  But also terrible film, worst book, written for simpleton book.

• 1:22:59Speaker 04

  Of all the VR examples.

• 1:23:00Ed Zitron?

  Remember all the things that you know. Uh, but also that film was a dystopia. The other thing is it's an extrasensory psychological experience. You would need things that.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  So many.

• 1:23:09Ed Zitron?

  Need to, that do not even the beginnings of, you don't have something that can take over your senses and you can move in a space vastly different.

• 1:23:19Speaker 04

  Accessibility in VR and augmented reality is like really tough.

• 1:23:22Ed Zitron?

  We're not even there. And in the same way with AI, we don't have a thinking computer. This shit can't do anything on its own. You try and like, oh, agency here, fuck you. Agents on nowhere, stop using that word. Every time you use the word agent. Norman Finquist saying, Mr. Barelli, anyway. For a reference to people.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  Podcast loves voices.

• 1:23:42Ed Zitron?

  I love doing voices.

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  Ed loves voices.

• 1:23:44Ed Zitron?

  I love voices. It's just every time I hear from these fucking companies and how much money they have. And they're like, here is something that sucks. It stinks. You should be so excited. You need to be excited for this. It sucks. It doesn't do the thing you want it to do. Can it do this? No. Will it do this? Trust me.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  Well, if you get us to our next round of funding.

• 1:24:05Ed Zitron?

  But even if you're like Amazon or Google.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Ed Zitron?

  Apple.

• 1:24:09Speaker 05

  The thing I hate most about all of this, that beyond everything we've already said, and I think we've already kind of alluded to this with what you just said, Ed, which is we're spending a lot of money on things that don't work, but we're in the process generating a lot of ways, generating a lot of like energy loss. All the server farms that are just going to take over this world just to back up and store all of that data that they're scoping and like grabbing from you.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  The only reason I love AI is every time I'm like, am I pretty? I know it is costing someone so much money to have that little shitty robot be like, you're the cutest.

• 1:24:42Ed Zitron?

  Dump truck of like animals into a furnace.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm like, yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  You're turning our planet to get validation from Claude.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:24:50Speaker 05

  How many bees have they sold?

• 1:24:53Speaker 04

  That I don't know. They're like, they're in like a beta thing. It's technically an Apple Watch app too. You don't actually need to buy their hardware.

• 1:25:00Ed Zitron?

  Fuck yeah. This company rules. I fucking love this. They're so.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  How many humane AI pins have caught on fire and are now in the trash because they turned all the features off?

• 1:25:09Speaker 04

  Company.

• 1:25:10Speaker 05

  They said 10,000 units, they said? Something like that?

• 1:25:13Ed Zitron?

  I love, humane was the biggest like dunce moment for members of the media that I'm not going to name. So many people were like, this is going to be great. Even though it was like, yeah, it's a seven.

• 1:25:22Speaker 04

  They got so mad at me when I wrote my translation piece and they were like, we, we need to talk. And then I was like, let's talk.

• 1:25:27Speaker 05

  Was it Bethany that reached out or?

• 1:25:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, they ghosted me.

• 1:25:30Speaker 05

  Well, they ghosted us.

• 1:25:31Ed Zitron?

  Two management consultants, both like indignity. Um, anyway, we have to bring this to an end because we, we are running out of time. And otherwise I'm just going to start reading the Kevin Roos bit again.

• 1:25:43Ed Zitron?

  That motherfucking, I just.

• 1:25:44Speaker 04

  As an irresponsible piece, right?

• 1:25:46Ed Zitron?

  It is irresponsible. I think that that is a, a good kind of place to get some final thoughts where it's like, it's not just that these things don't work and they stink and they're expensive and they burn billions of dollars. They destroy the environment. They steal from everyone.

• 1:25:59Speaker 05

  Not just that, sure.

• 1:26:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Other than those things.

• 1:26:03Ed Zitron?

  By representing them as imminently useful and helpful, the only thing you are doing is empowering the powerful and creating more cycles where useful things don't get funded and useless things get more money than ever. And it's disgusting. I actually, I know it sounds a little dramatic to be like, the guy said the computer was too smart, but it's, you're speaking on the New York Times, and it's not just him, it's Ezra Klein as well, another fucking moron. Jesus fucking Christ, these guys. Put one, I, I, just like, put like, anyone in this room, I think they do a much fucking better job. But it's just like, it's empowering people who do not have anyone's best interests in mind, or any, or actually fixing anyone's real problems.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  And or are out of touch.

• 1:26:44Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 1:26:44Speaker 05

  Or just acknowledging that being a human is hard.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  I, I still maintain, if you get a certain income, you're not allowed to have online, like, you can't talk online.

• 1:26:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:54Speaker 03

  Because you are so out of touch from the rest of us, I, I don't want to hear it.

• 1:26:57Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  What's the number?

• 1:26:59Speaker 03

  Way more than I make.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, but. A mil or a hundred mil?

• 1:27:05Speaker 03

  It's like a couple of million, right? Like, like, like, if you're, if you're like, oh, I can go spend 12K on a first-class ticket, you have too much money. You can't talk anymore.

• 1:27:12Ed Zitron?

  No, it reminds me of the Sam Altman moment on this My Favorite Notebook podcast, where he's like, "Yeah, so I write my little notes, and I crumple them up and I throw them behind me, and the housekeeper..."

• 1:27:21Speaker 03

  That's a really good accent.

• 1:27:22Ed Zitron?

  "The housekeeper comes by, and she, I don't know where she go..." Which means she's there all the time. And it's just like, first of all, you said in front of a person you have a housekeeper. Second of all, you could not remember when they're there, which means they're always there. And third of all, you're just creating, like, you're fucking AI, you're just creating trash information you throw around and expect someone else to clean up. Loadsome little fucks. Anyway, great place to end it. Cherlynn, where can people find you?

• 1:27:45Speaker 05

  Angata.com, and I guess, uh, I don't know what social media platform to shout out. Blue Sky, sherlyn.bsky.social.

• 1:27:54Ed Zitron?

  Alex?

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I'm about to start. Start? Yeah. Start? Yeah, I'm gonna start this over again.

• 1:28:00Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that's enough.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I am about to start a four-week special engagement at Gizmodo. I'm gonna be hanging out with those folks and saying all sorts of things that really need to be said about technology because, oh, boy, are we in a moment.

• 1:28:14Ed Zitron?

  In a great moment.

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  And you can also find me on all social media platforms until I make enough money where I don't have to use them. Beautiful.

• 1:28:21Ed Zitron?

  Victoria?

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  You can find me at @Vicensong on every social media platform, and I write at The Verge.

• 1:28:27Ed Zitron?

  You can find me on the New York Times. My name's Kevin Rus.

• 1:28:30Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 1:28:31Ed Zitron?

  And I will be saying multiple.

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  Catfish, we've been catfished.

• 1:28:34Ed Zitron?

  I am Kevin Rus. No, you can find me on all my social media platforms. Ed Zitron, there isn't another one, thankfully, because I think they.

• 1:28:40Speaker 03

  Weren't you in The New Yorker, though? Aren't you in The New Yorker? You were recently. Oh, woo!

• 1:28:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, they, they, they catch up too spicy to me. They were like right at the beginning of it. I didn't think that they, he wasn't recording yet, and he was like, I was like, yeah, is the Kung Pow chicken spicy? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, is the, thankfully, he kept up the bit. It was like, is the plum chicken spicy? And the bit where I was like, eating white rice and going, oh, hot, hot.

• 1:29:07Ed Zitron?

  Me going on Hot Ones and just drinking the milk.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  Let's get gingerbread after this.

• 1:29:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:11Ed Zitron?

  Please don't kill me. Um, but yeah, thank you for listening, everyone. It's been another Radio Better offline. And Alexa, Play Tool 46 and 2.

• 1:29:20Speaker 03

  That's cruel.

• 1:29:22Ed Zitron?

  Some bangs, I don't care.

• 1:29:25Ed Zitron?

  One of the greatest songs of all time.

• 1:29:35Ed 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 at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:30:07Speaker 07

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

• 1:30:40Speaker 00

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