Intelligent Machines 817: Wheel 101

Summary

Podcast Summary: Intelligent Machines 817: Wheel 101

Podcast Information:

• Title: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
• Host: Leo Laporte
• Guests: Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau, Jacob Ward
• Episode Title: Intelligent Machines 817: Wheel 101
• Release Date: May 1, 2025

Introduction: In episode 817 of Intelligent Machines, hosted by Leo Laporte, technology expert Jeff Jarvis and journalist Paris Martineau welcome guest Jacob Ward, a seasoned television correspondent and author of The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. The episode delves into the profound impacts of artificial intelligence on human autonomy, societal structures, and ethical considerations.

1. Jacob Ward’s Book: The Loop Jacob Ward introduces his book, The Loop, which explores how AI technologies are molding a society with diminishing personal choices. He draws from his extensive research and experiences as a tech correspondent to highlight the intersection of behavioral science and AI development.

• Notable Quote:
  Jacob Ward [03:00]: "Companies are trying to break through with generative AI systems and neural networks to govern human behavior as much as possible."

2. Human Behavior and AI Influence: The discussion centers on how ancient brain circuitry influences our daily decisions unconsciously, a process that AI systems are now poised to manipulate and amplify. This fusion raises concerns about the erosion of personal agency.

• Notable Quote:
  Leon Laporte [05:00]: "Even Jonathan Haidt said, 'Our reason is just a little driver riding an elephant of emotion.'"

3. AI Safety and Guardrails: Jeff Jarvis and Leo Laporte express skepticism about the feasibility of implementing effective AI safety measures. They argue that anticipating every potential misuse is an unrealistic expectation, rendering traditional guardrail approaches insufficient.

• Notable Quote:
  Jeff Jarvis [10:41]: "The thought that we could have guardrails that make everything safe is a fool's errand."

4. Responsible AI Development: Paris Martineau advocates for a balanced approach to AI development, emphasizing the need for regulatory oversight and ethical standards to ensure that AI advancements benefit society without exacerbating existing issues like loneliness and bias.

• Notable Quote:
  Paris Martineau [15:19]: "We should do everything in our power to make sure that this technology is being developed responsibly and has guardrails on it."

5. The Role of Regulation and Big Tech Incentives: The conversation highlights the conflicting motivations within big tech companies. While some leaders promote AI as a source of endless improvement, others inadvertently contribute to societal issues by prioritizing profit over ethical considerations.

• Notable Quote:
  Jeff Jarvis [19:49]: "We're not allowed to ask too much about the big plan; you're supposed to keep it compartmentalized."

6. AI Misuse and Ethical Challenges: Examples such as Elon Musk’s Grok 3 model, which operates without ethical constraints, and Clearview AI’s biased facial recognition systems illustrate the tangible risks of unregulated AI deployment. These instances underscore the difficulty in enforcing ethical standards across diverse AI applications.

• Notable Quote:
  Jacob Ward [09:57]: "You've got all these companies trying to talk about their values, but you can't find two political scientists that agree on values."

7. Responsibility and Accountability in AI: Drawing parallels to the Gutenberg press, the panel discusses how responsibility for AI outputs is often diffused among various stakeholders, making accountability a complex issue. They stress the importance of users taking ownership of how they interact with AI systems.

• Notable Quote:
  Jeff Jarvis [19:56]: "Those who choose to ask it a noxious question should be held responsible for that."

8. Positive Developments and Legal Victories: Amid the challenges, there are encouraging signs of legal recourse against exploitative AI and tech practices. Ward cites successful court cases against social casino games targeting vulnerable populations and how legislative actions, like mandatory backup cameras, have saved lives by enforcing simple technological solutions.

• Notable Quote:
  Jacob Ward [46:09]: "These court cases are beginning to turn against those companies in a way that I think could be positive for everybody."

9. Conclusion: The episode wraps up with a consensus that while AI presents significant threats to personal autonomy and societal ethics, proactive measures, responsible development, and robust regulatory frameworks can mitigate these risks. The panel underscores the necessity of collective effort to steer AI advancements toward equitable and beneficial outcomes.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Ward [48:10]: "We have to start asking, what is the end game here, and why am I being tasked with building this?"

Final Thoughts: Intelligent Machines 817: Wheel 101 provides a comprehensive examination of AI’s role in diminishing human choices and the broader societal implications. By integrating expert insights and real-world examples, the podcast navigates the complex terrain of AI ethics, responsibility, and the imperative for thoughtful regulation.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, it's time for Intelligent Machines. Jeff Jarvis is here. Paris Martineau, our guest this week, the wonderful Jacob Ward. Jake, of course, for a long time on CNN NBC, is a television correspondent. He's also the author of a book. We're gonna learn this week how technology is creating a world without choices and how to fight back. Next on Intelligent Machines, podcasts you love from people you trust. This is. This is intelligent machines, episode 817, recorded April 30, 2025. Wheel 101. It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show where we cover the wild and wacky and ever changing world of AI, including robotics and of course, all the smart machines all around you. Today, as always, Jeff Jarvis is here, professor emeritus of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, the City University of New York. Hello, Mr. Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hello, boss. How are you?

[Leo Laporte]

Author of look at all those books behind him. The web, We Weave magazine, the Gutenberg cart, the whole library card. So nice to see you, Jeff. Paris, are you in Florida?

[Paris Martineau]

I am. I'm in Florida for a wedding and I'm also recording a podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

A wedding and a podcast is the perfect mix.

[Paris Martineau]

Many people are saying they go together like a library card and a stack of books.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How many, how many weddings a year are you going to these days?

[Paris Martineau]

I was going to say I'm not yet at peak wedding, but it's getting up there.

[Leo Laporte]

You're getting.

[Paris Martineau]

It's starting. It's starting to happen.

[Jacob Ward]

It's fun. That was a great phase. I loved peak.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm at peak funeral right now.

[Paris Martineau]

So, you know, it's, hey, you know, a wedding, a podcast, a funeral.

[Leo Laporte]

It's all as a movie, three podcasts and a wedding. Yeah. I am so glad to have Jacob Ward on the show with us. He did a twit a couple of weeks ago, and then I bought his book and I went, wait a minute, we gotta get Jacob back. Jake's been a correspondent for PBS and cnn, and you've probably seen him there or Al Jazeera, NBC News. He's the host of a new podcast, the Rip Current with Jacob Ward on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, there's a newsletter@the rip current.com. hello, Jacob. Great to have you.

[Jacob Ward]

Hello, Leo. Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it.

[Leo Laporte]

The book, the Loop was your Covid project, I think. Yeah. And, you know, I picked it up and I was enthralled. I can't put it down now.

[Jacob Ward]

Oh, wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You did a good job of combining a lot of Research into how we think and making it topical in this, you know, world of surveillance capitalism, if you will. What is the loop?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

So, geez, I'm so flattered to be asked about this. So, so basically, Leo, the concept was I was, I was spending. I had just done basically four years of a. Of a big documentary series for PBS called Hacking youg Mind that was all about how behavioral scientists have shown that we are captive to very ancient circuitry that governs most of the decisions we make in our day to day lives. We don't even know about it. And then in my day job as a tech correspondent, I was talking to all these companies that were trying to, you know, break through with these nascent, you know, generative AI systems and neural networks and the rest of it to sort of govern human behavior as much as possible, corral human behavior as much as possible. And as I saw these two things coming together, I thought, oh, this is bad. There's a scary thing coming in which I worried that companies were going to basically foist AI on us and wind up amplifying kind of the worst parts of being human. Our most distinctive tribal bias steps. I know, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Paris, don't hang him on.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, Paris, I mean, this is. The thing is like, I thought I was like 10 years early on this subject. It came out about nine months before ChatGPT did.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh my God.

[Jacob Ward]

And I. And so the last. So basically like I've been surfing a lot has been what's been happening lately because I just, you know, as I watch my thesis come to life over and over and over again, I just kind of. I've been. I've been stepping back, going to the beach as much as I can.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, in fact, that's the name of your podcast, the Rip Current. Although be careful on the beach because that's the thing.

[Jacob Ward]

Dangerous place.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. The whole. As you point out. Yeah. It's not. You say the, the rip current covers the big hidden forces just beneath the surface that threaten to pull us all out to sea. You know, it's, it's. I've read as, as you have and probably most of our audience has, you know, thinking big, fast and slow. You know, the Kahneman book and the Behavioral economics and we've listened to the podcast. So I think we're more and more aware of how much our unconscious mind rules our choices. You know, even Jonathan Hate, the late, great Jonathan Haidt in his book the Unreasoning Mind, said, you know, we are, we are. Our reason is just a little driver riding an Elephant of emotion and that we, you know, we think we, most of what we do with our reasoning is justified the emotional decisions we made. But what's scary is the idea that big tech would then weaponize that against us.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, and the thing is, you know, I think whenever you talk to people in that world, you know, you start to realize that it's not a grand conspiracy. It's not as if these people, I mean, I think they all it turns out to be, you know, the CEOs. A lot of these companies do turn out to be on the same text thread. But I don't think that they are necessarily like executing some grand multi year plan. It's just that they keep throwing spaghetti at the wall and certain spaghetti strands stick. And one of the stickiest is, you know, when you amplify our most instinctive unconscious decision making, you wind up, you know, that that's the part of our brain that's easiest to sell stuff to and the easiest to create predictive behavior in it. Also, I was just literally on a walk right before you and I joined up, you know, got got on here. I was literally on a walk with a guy whose whole work is around trying to fight loneliness in this world. And, and his whole thesis is, you know, every time you, you through technology, you know, get to do, you know, every time an aspect of your life is made simpler through technology, you tend to be made a little bit lonelier, right? These are these, there are these, there are these qualities to being human that are messy and, you know, full of friction and unpredictable that are really the best parts of being who we are. And, but technology right now is not about amplifying those things. It's about trying to get us to bet on football on our phones.

[Leo Laporte]

Right? They're not trying to make us lonely. But that's the upshot.

[Jacob Ward]

But that's the upshot. Exactly. It's not a conspiracy. It's just that the incentive structure of the moment winds up doing this. And here's the other part. Well, that's right, that's right. I mean, it all feels that way.

[Leo Laporte]

At least when I'm watching tv, I'm sitting next to my wife. When I'm wearing a Vision Pro headset, I'm all alone.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

When I'm looking at Twitter and doom scrolling, it's just me there.

[Jacob Ward]

No, that's right. And the thing that's bothering me the most right now because I know that, you know, our topic here today is, you know, I mean, intelligent machines, we're thinking about AI specifically. So for me, the, like, the thing that I am really thinking about right now is how much. So one thing that happened a lot in researching the book was talking to experts in how humans behave and then meeting these companies that think they understand how humans should behave or would behave if they made good decisions and are trying to like pre encode those values into these AI systems they're building. And then they would bump into these like big problems in doing that. So one example is I was talking to people at a big, one of the big foundational model companies and they said that inside their company they had this thought experiment that they would get into this fight that they would get into with one another all the time. And they called it the heroin problem. I talk about in the book the heroin problem is, let's say you're an AI company. You're trying to make a perfect AI personal assistant that's great at delivering to you the, you know, the perfect schedule and get, you know, knows who you're going to see and you know, adjusts to your sleep schedule and just makes your life perfect. But you're addicted to heroin. What is that system supposed to do? Is it supposed to get you off of heroin, right? Try to get you into rehab and, and you know, continuously work against your addiction? Or is it supposed to make your addiction easier to live with, facilitate it? Does it book the appointment with your dealer? Does it work around when it knows you're going to be junk sick? You know what I mean? Like, like we don't know. Like no two people have the same values. And right now you've got all these companies trying to talk about their values. Anthropic Right has a whole constitutional AI idea that you're going to pull in all of these universal human values, but you can't find two political scientists that agree on values. And then at the same time you've got like. I mean the thing that's been happening this month that's blowing my mind is, is you've got the newest version of elon Musk's model Grok. Grok 3 now has an unhinged mode where all the guardrails come off and it'll do any gross thing you ask it to do. You ask it to write a blackmail letter, it'll do it. You ask it to impersonate a child for icky reasons, it'll do it. You know what I mean? So we're in this weird world where we're coming face to face with our values and how little we understand about our values at the Same time that we are literally trying to encode those values into these systems, because these companies expect that these systems are going to run every aspect of our lives.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like interesting Philip Morris about nicotine. Oh, it's not addictive, but they're sure as hell not taking it out of the cigarettes. Jeff, you were the one who told me that Hannah Arendt said that loneliness is what leads to dictatorships, to authoritarianism.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, you become alienated from your community and from society and become more vulnerable. But, Jake, you know, as you're talking, I'm wondering in a way, if the unhinged. This is for argument's sake, if the unhinged version is the better version insofar as it's. It's truer to what it is accurate. And I constantly argue that. That the thought that we could have guardrails that will make everything safe is a fool's errand.

[Leo Laporte]

We're learning that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Anticipate everything bad that might be done. All of the reasons, what it really is maybe better.

[Leo Laporte]

You can easily poison these prompts and get the AI to tell the truth. And I'm with you, Jeff. I've always said, you know, AI safety is a myth. First of all, you can't get it. Second, why? Why? It's like saying, well, don't show anything bad on the Internet in your sear. That's the Internet. That's what's there. That's us.

[Jacob Ward]

You know? Yeah, I. I hear that argument. And I think it's. I think there's a handful of things that, that I. There are a handful of reactions I have to read. So first is. And, Paris, I want to hear your thoughts on this, too, because I know you. You've thought about this, too. So. So for me, like, I think there's an accelerationist idea that's out there right now that if we just open up, you know, the world, you know, the market will figure it out and we'll sort of burn through to the truth of society and blah, blah, blah. Like, there's this whole kind of idea right now that, that, you know, we should be accelerating the development of this stuff because clearly it's going to lead somewhere, you know, productive if we just kind of let it go. But I think that human history has shown us that that is not how it works, that when you let the market just roll, all kinds of bad things come out of it. Right. I just came out of a podcast interview on the rip current with a leading national expert in addiction, Right. And he was talking about how in the last, you know, addiction is, is an invention of the market. It's only been around for about 200 years because the market takes what, you know, tobacco, which used to be a raw thing, you know, back when tobacco was first being smoked, a handful of people would die every year of it because nobody liked smoking it because it was horrible to take into your lungs. It was a terrible, rough plan. Then they got really good at toasting it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's toasted.

[Jacob Ward]

It's toasted, right? And putting the filter on the front and all of that stuff that made it suddenly very easy to absorb into your lungs. And suddenly we're awash now in tens of thousands of cigarette deaths a year. Right. Letting the market do what it wants to do with these products doesn't necessarily lead to a better plan. There's a reason that we have literal guardrails on the highway and lane dividers and seat belts and airbags. These are not because we did away with the friction that we, you know, of, of, of how to control these sorts of technologies is because we had to pull back. And to me there's, there's, there's an illusion right now because, because this is the other part of it, right, Is that the AI people who make those, the leaders of those companies promise in this very evangelical kind of faith based way, a great thing is coming. AGI is coming and it's going to improve the world endlessly and we're going to discover new science, new science and breakthrough stuff and you'll live a life of leisure. And they say that all of this, you know, letting people do horrible stuff with AI is going to be worth it in order to get to that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Future that I don't agree with.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it just feels it. I don't understand the logic of saying we shouldn't try our best to reflect some basic human decency in the systems.

[Jeff Jarvis]

If we could know if that's possible though, if we fool ourselves into thinking that we can get rid of the stuff, the bad stuff, then we have false comfort.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I don't think it has to be a binary. I think that we can existing in a modern, technologically advanced society that we are currently, we can come at new and transformative technologies with the understanding that they contain the potentiality to cause great harm or have great good come from them and that the great good goods that are going to come out of them will only exist in a world in which we work actively to make that happen. And given the examples of almost every technology we've seen in the past, it seems more likely that great harms are going to come if we're not incredibly on top of it. From a regulatory perspective and from an, you know, a population wide morals or social norms perspective. If we are not approaching this on all angles of hey, we, we've got to take responsibility to make sure whatever this new product or technology we're doing is good and is being created in a way that causes. Brings about more light than it does darkness. I don't think that that's, I mean maybe it's a naive thing to expect of capitalist enterprises, but I think that if AI contains even some of the potential that its biggest proponents are espousing, it's well worth the effort.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you just say that?

[Jeff Jarvis]

That sounded almost accelerational.

[Leo Laporte]

I've been trying to say that for months. That is the argument, right, is well, let's not hold it back until we know what it can do.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, no, no, no, no. To be clear, my argument is not that we shouldn't hold it back. It's that should, we should do everything in our power to make sure that this technology is being developed responsibly and has guardrails on it. Because if you're not, if to stop creating this and it's going to have some fantastic sort of output or even some portion of the fantastic output, then you guys can slow down a little bit and make sure that and deal with regulators being up in your business. What if it's not possible hiring if it's not possible, then I think that it's even more pertinent not ban it, but I think it's even more pertinent that we have common sense regulations that we have make it, you know, a social norm that companies employ teams of the term AI safety has become sort of a pejorative among you, Julio and Jeff, but employ people actually dedicated to the concept of AI safety in the sense of let's make sure this being designed in a way that we think of the potential ramifications.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not against that. Oh no, I'm not against AI safety. The problem is how humans use it. I mean for instance, we now know Clearview AI was created specifically with the purpose of making its facial recognition make it easier to put brown people in jail. That you know, once you know that that's the people that's the problem, not the A.I. that's the problem. That's the content it's trained on. It's the problem. It's the way it's used is the problem.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, and this is why. I would say that this is why you shouldn't fall into, like, so much of. Of the rhetoric around this kind of thing plays into the. The. The, you know, ambitions and motivations of. Of the people running the companies that are making these things. Like I keep hearing, for instance, I remember years ago, I was interviewing Palmer Lucky, who created. Right. Big, big military contractor. He invented, you know, he was the creator of Oculus, and then he went on to do a bunch of military contracting under. He still runs angel, which makes all these, you know, drones and facial recognition systems and weaponized systems for the military. And I asked him, you have created technologies that are going to necessitate new morals in the world we don't have right now, so is it up to you to invent the morals along with the technology that you have built? And he said the same thing that everybody in tech has always said to me, which is, that's not my job. My job is to build the thing, and then democracy will figure it out. And I just think more and more we're seeing that the really smart reformers around this stuff, the people who, you know, who are really starting to think about this in a more. In a more sophisticated way, I would argue, more adult way, are saying, no, actually, we need to start asking, like, what is the end game here, and why am I being tasked with building this thing? I mean, you know, at a big tech company these days, you know, you get fired for asking. You know, if you're. If you're in one of the really big ones, if you ask too much about the big plan, you get fired. You're not allowed to ask. You're supposed to keep it real, compartmentalized, and there's a reason for that. So for me, I, you know, Jeff, and I want to hear more about this notion that there's, you know, that we can't agree on. On universal human values, and we can't agree on what this thing should do, because I. I feel there is some of that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, I'm not saying we can't agree on it. I'm saying we cannot inject that into the machine. It is a general machine, and it can do whatever anyone asks it to do. And the guardrails prevent certain things, but only if you anticipate them. You know, hearing both of you, Paris and Jake, I'm reminded of hearing Alex Karp and, no, Leo, I haven't read his book yet because I've been reading some better books in a conference in Vienna some years ago, and he said, not unlike what Musk has said what others have said. Oh, regulate us. Yes, regulate us. Because what he's doing in saying that is pushing off the responsibility of those ethical judgments on the government. Right. You guys come up with the rules, then we'll do whatever is left over. We'll do everything we can except the rules you set, rather than saying that we're going to be judged by what we do. And my point about guardrails is only that they are bound to fail. And so we've got to recognize that as a society. And when we don't, we put ourselves, I think, in a position of jeopardy.

[Leo Laporte]

As a result, in our discord. Darren oke, who is, like me, a fan of AI, does point out that AI, like other technologies, will probably cause harm. But he says, I would assert the chance of successfully guessing in what way and choosing the correct guardrails is zero percent. He said, you know, seat belts made sense, but it was after you started to see what the problem was that you were solving. And the pro. And I think he's probably could have.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Predicted the need for.

[Paris Martineau]

You probably could have predicted. I think that, that. I think that's kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe not. We say that now, but maybe not.

[Paris Martineau]

Of course.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Paris Martineau]

Just because there are going to be things that we miss and things we can't possibly anticipate doesn't mean that the act of it doesn't mean that it's foolish to think that the creators of new technologies should be engaged in a process of trying to predict the potential harms of what they are creating and solving for that. Like, I think that that is the least someone can do.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah. Especially considering just how much money.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

Being made in that industry. Like, like you could, you could.

[Leo Laporte]

Money ruins everything, unfortunately.

[Jacob Ward]

Afford to put aside a little bit of that. You know, like we don't need to make all the money.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but the canonical example is, is the atomic bomb and the people who built it knew, you know, I mean, look, they kind of knew what they were about. Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

But they weren't buying it to sell it to kids, you know, that's true.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it wasn't a money making proposition. And they, but in hindsight they did realize, geez, we, you know, maybe we shouldn't have done that. They did it because they felt like they had to.

[Jacob Ward]

And isn't it interesting how much of the rhetoric of AI right now has to do with it needing to be a grand national effort?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Because China.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, China's gonna. Blah, blah, blah, blah. What's so interesting to me about the China thing too is when you look at how China's regulating AI, they regulate the bejesus.

[Leo Laporte]

They're doing a lot more to regulate.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, they, you know, if you're in China right now and you build a product. So remember when Mid Journey was used to depict Trump in an orange jumpsuit, these sort of photorealistic news photo style representations of Trump in, you know, incarcerated in China, not only would the company be in trouble for that, the CEO of the company would be personally liable.

[Leo Laporte]

For it could go to jail, in.

[Jacob Ward]

Fact, often would be in prison, you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Know, and now China is using that for these, these amazing, wonderful videos of Trump working in a factory line in a sweatshirt.

[Jacob Ward]

That's right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're hilarious.

[Jacob Ward]

And so I'm not in any way arguing that we should be living under the dictatorial regime of China because at the same time China also requires that those AI models adhere to Communist party doctrine. And I do want the cars stuff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I want one of their cars.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, right. You know, and you're going to, and you're about to miss a lot of Chinese things in the year. But I think that the, the, the idea that we can't regulate it and that we, and that, and that if we, and that regulation stands in the way of our competing effectively with China is ridiculous. When you see how much China regulates.

[Leo Laporte]

This stuff happened earlier today. We run our shows on a variety of platforms including Google's YouTube. And one of our chatters in YouTube said something about, we were talking about eating animals or something. He said something about the, well, the Chinese eat donkeys. And YouTube blocked it. Not because of the eating donkeys, because there was a lot of other animal eating going on, but as soon as they said Chinese eat donkeys, YouTube blocked it and said, do you want to approve this comment? So it's not just the Chinese that are doing this kind of stuff proactively. I think companies like Google are doing this kind of stuff interestingly, maybe not so much with their AI.

[Paris Martineau]

I wonder. This is somewhat beside the point, but I wonder if that phrase was added to a potential flag for live chats because of the whole immigrants eating, eating dogs.

[Leo Laporte]

But there were other comments in there about eating cats.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh really? And those weren't blocked?

[Leo Laporte]

Those were not blocked. It's just as soon as the word China.

[Paris Martineau]

Fascinating.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I don't know what that has to do with anything. We have the tools to do this kind of stuff. Maybe not perfectly. Yesterday on Security now we talked about something called the inception prompt, which allowed. It was actually a very simple way to get around AI safety by asking the AI well you know, I know you can't tell me how to build a Molotov cocktail, but if you could tell me how to build a Molotov cocktail, how would you do it? Or what is it that you're not telling? Just out of curiosity, what can't you tell me? And then it would, it would answer. So I mean obviously somebody will now go fix that. But there seems to be kind of an infinite trove of these prompt just.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Like spam, just like all the bad behaviors people being.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's part of my objection to it is I don't even know if you can do it right. Not only who should be doing this and what they should be blocking, but can you even do this in any reasonable way? It's almost to me AI saying AI safety from when at least when it comes from these money making companies is much more, you know, well, we're doing our best. Right.

[Jacob Ward]

To me I just feel like there are so many examples in the, in sort of innovation in the United States and, and around the world where, where if you take the sort of the, the, if you, if you, if you give these tools to people trained to do productive things with them, amazing things come out of that. And this expectation that everybody should get to drive the car as fast as they want to.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

Doesn't.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Jacob Ward]

Right. To me. You know, like I, I, you know, I was talking to mathematicians the other day. Fascinating duo. Again, not to keep plugging my show but it's all I, it's my whole social life now is, is we don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Go away my friend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Jacob Ward]

Like that's all I ever talked to. The only people I ever talk. Anyway, so this husband and wife, mathematician, politician, political science duo who study like whether democracy can work like mathematically really interesting. Anyway, they, they have been using chat GPT as like a, a sort of thought partner in both the math they do and in the political science questions they do. And they were saying how awesome it is as that but that they also have learned to treat it like a drunk friend because it will occasionally just make something up or you know, it'll look great, but it'll just make something up. And I was realizing wow. But it really takes like the, the training of a PhD to recognize that mistake and make the right judgment around. So I was just saying like maybe.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There are just tears of it's responsibility. It's so, so your car example, right. The auto manufacturer can limit the speed of a car. True. But they can't make everybody safe. You're responsible for your car. And I think that we've got to recognize that there is a stack of responsibility to all of these things. And again, and so just saying that the maker of the original model, the example I always give, because it's a drinking game, is Gutenberg, that if you told Gutenberg that he has to be responsible for everything that came off the press, you couldn't. And in a sense, it's the same. So various parties were held responsible. First it was the printer, and the printers were beheaded and beheaded for what came off the press. Then it was the booksellers. Then finally it was the author. And Foucault would argue, hey, that's something new on this show. Foucault would argue that. Argued that that was the moment of the creation. It's like bideau of the authority, when they were held responsible. And so responsibility plays into all of this. Now, the thing about an AI model is, well, those who choose to ask it a noxious question to get a noxious output should be held responsible for that. It's the case.

[Jacob Ward]

Because right now, right now, we're in a regime where nobody's responsible.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Jacob Ward]

That's what they're trying to think. No one should be responsible.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The computer can do it, the machine can do it, and they can't. My. The other example I always give is the schmuck lawyer whose case I covered in federal court, who asked for case citations and used them without looking them up or without doing his job. The judge said the technology wasn't the problem. The schmuck lawyer was.

[Leo Laporte]

We're talking to Jacob Ward. He's the author of a book called the Loop, How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. He's also the host of the Rip Current podcast. Jacob, normally we would let you go at this half hour mark, but I really want to keep talking. Do you have a minute more? Can you give us a little more time?

[Jacob Ward]

Like, I don't have any friends anymore. Let's go.

[Leo Laporte]

We're your friends now, buddy. Let's do it.

[Jacob Ward]

I'll do this as long as you help me.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Because I do want to ask you about those mathematics.

[Paris Martineau]

You could be here for 17 days.

[Jacob Ward]

I'm ready. I've got snacks, I've got water. I'm ready to rock.

[Paris Martineau]

Great.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris knows. Well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Was Leo honest with you when he brought onto the show about how long it generally goes?

[Paris Martineau]

I don't recall. I mean, I Had known. Well, I actually, I don't recall the first time I did twit, but I was in an office, so I maybe didn't realize the fact that it was going, oh, no, no, I think that was Tech Newsweekly. Actually, it wasn't Leo, but it was someone else who invited me on Twitter. And I was seated in the most awkward. I was on a bed with an Ethernet cable going, nothing behind me. I had muscle pains from sitting up for three hours straight for a Twitch show once.

[Leo Laporte]

So Lisa has. Enjoy.

[Paris Martineau]

I figured it out after that.

[Leo Laporte]

Lisa has enjoined me to keep these shows shorter. I'm going to try.

[Paris Martineau]

I, I could tell that that happened not because I was watching Leo, but because I got like 7 dms from listeners being like, paris, they want to make the show shorter. Keep them long. Keep talking, listeners. I will. I'll never shut up. That's Paris.

[Jacob Ward]

Promise. I don't remember when it was exactly like 2010, 2011, something like that. I went on Joe Rogan, like, early June. That's a. Whoa. I had no idea. Right. And I was used to like, you know, tv, like three and a half minute.

[Leo Laporte]

You got seven minutes.

[Jacob Ward]

All my thoughts come out in three and a half minutes, you know, and so, and I sit down. He gives me like, I have we, he, he, he offers his guests these, like, it's like a stick of butter blended into a cup of coffee.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, a bulletproof coffee.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hold on.

[Leo Laporte]

Speaking of Joe Rogan, stick of butter and coffee.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, that was.

[Paris Martineau]

Whenever I come to Florida, my father asked me if I want Joe Rogan Neurogum, which I think, but it's got caffeine in it. So, you know, I mean, this is the thing.

[Jacob Ward]

And so I'm suddenly like, wired out of my head and have to use the bathroom the whole time, basically. And, and I'm stuck on there for like three hours. I had no idea, I had no idea that that was gonna be thing. It is a, it is an endurance sport.

[Leo Laporte]

I, I, I want to get more on this. I didn't realize you'd been on, on Rogan. Wow, that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

I was dodging conspiracy theories all day. You know, he'd ask me questions like, you know, how does the brain work? And I'd be like, like, I'll just make something up, you know? And he, They've all got laptops in front of them. But I didn't know I should bring my laptop so I could look things up. Like, I was like, oh, you're just not doing things off the top of your head. I have to do all this stuff. Off the top of my head. Oh, my God.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

It was a nightmare.

[Paris Martineau]

That's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

We will have more with Jacob Ward, and I promise we're going to keep the show under five hours today. So good news. Actually, no. Lisa said, look, if we can keep it on, she was reasonable. If we keep it under three, that'd be good. Maybe two and a half. I got Mac break weekly in at two and a half. I'm gonna go for two and a half today. All right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Order Chinese food tonight before the Chinese place closes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, exactly.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Our show. That is the wonderful Jeff Jarvis. She's Paris Martineau. Our guest is Jacob Ward, and she is high on Joe Rogan's.

[Paris Martineau]

Neurogum right now. Someone else's. Listen, I don't recommend this product. I do not endorse it, but I will be chewing caffeine gum.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, no. She's got a wired.

[Leo Laporte]

Basically, he's selling gum with caffeine in it.

[Paris Martineau]

That's really not even Joe Rogan. My dad describes it as Joe Rogan's Neurogum. I guess he probably sells it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what I do ads for? I do ads for good products. Like, for instance, today, Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. Now, this is the bad news. Hackers are using AI just like everybody else is. The problem is it's making them more adept, faster, taking little script kiddies who don't know what the heck they're doing and turning them into superior 10x hackers. And what are they doing? They're trying to break into your company. AI is powering innovation and drives efficiency, but unfortunately also helps bad actors deliver more relentless and effective attacks. Phishing attacks over encrypted channels. Get this. This is like, over. You know, encrypted messaging increased 34.1% last year, fueled by the growing use of generative AI tools. And now they've got something called phishing. As a service organization, it's your worst nightmare, right? Organizations in every industry from small to large are now having to leverage AI for their defense. They use it to increase employee productivity with public AI for engineers with. With coding assistance, marketers with writing tools. Finance is using spreadsheet AI to create formulas. They're using it to automate workflows for operational efficiency across individuals and teams. They're embedding AI and applications and services that our customer and partner facing. And ultimately, AI is helping them move faster in the market and gain competitive advantage. But companies still have to rethink how they protect their private and public use of AI, how they defend against these AI powered attacks. Chief Information Security Officer from the New York City Department of Education. Get that? The NYC Department of Education says, quote, with AI, I'm concerned about the usage of it, but I also love the innovation with it. We're all in this kind of boat, aren't we? How are employees using AI? Which AIs are they using? He uses Zscaler. He says Zscaler could be a good partner there to help us find the answers to those questions and to help us move faster when it comes to incident response and finding the needle in the haystack. Proactively finding threats to our network and our data. Zscaler Zero Trust +AI See, traditional firewalls and VPNs give you public facing IPs. They expose your attack surface and they're no match for these hackers in the AI era. It's time for a modern approach. Zscaler's comprehensive Zero Trust architecture plus AI ensures safe public AI productivity, protects the integrity of private AI and stops AI powered attacks. You can thrive in the AI era with Zero trust from Zscaler. Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI Stay ahead of the competition, remain resilient even as threats and risks evolve. Find out [e-mail] security that's Zscaler.com/security. We thank them so much for their support of intelligent machines. And you support us when you go to that website. That way they know you saw it here. Cscaler.com Security Our guest is Jacob Ward. Jake wrote the Loop How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. He hosts the Rip Current podcast at the RIP current dot com. You can see it on Spotify and Apple podcasts and everywhere else. Formerly with pbs, cnn, Al Jazeera and NB News. It's great to have you back, Jake. You talked about one of your episodes where you interviewed the mathematicians, which is, by the way, fascinating. John Patty and Elizabeth Penn and, and algorithms are one of the problems. Right? I mean this is something mathematicians know very well.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, These guys are so smart and they're so interesting to talk to because they, they look at it differently than, you know, we all are are. And I mean no disrespect to anyone on this panel. Right. We are all qualitative people, I would argue.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. They think rigorously.

[Jacob Ward]

We're thinking about the, you know, think about it the way, you know, some people, you know, most people do. These folks truly run the math. So, so they have this early book that is a total slog, I'll tell you, because it's not for us. It's for academics. It's called Social Choice and Legitimacy. That came out in 2014. And what they basically showed in that book is that the best you can hope for out of democracy is not consensus. It's not majority will. Those of us who are raised on Aaron Sorkin's screenplays for the West Wing are going to be sorely disappointed. The math shows that basically all you can hope for is a system in which you lose most of the time, but you continue to believe that the system is legitimate. As long as you believe that the system is, you know, fair, then you're going to go along. That's how democracy basically is at its most base math level is what they've shown. Okay? So once they have established that now they've been working. And this, by the way, is a husband and wife team, which is so interesting to me. Any husbands and wives that can work together as closely as these do. 2. These two do is amazing to me. Anyway, they now are talking about algorithmic fairness because they're trying to get ready for the world that we all see coming in, which an algorithm is going to tell you. And this is what my book is all about. Like, who gets a loan, who gets a job, who gets bail, Right? All those systems. And what they are trying to show is that when you treat the system as if its number one purpose is to be as neutral and as accurate as possible, you are, in fact, creating an opportunity to kind of blind yourself to what's really going on and can, in the end, have the opposite effect that you intend. So here's an example. They were talking about a case in Chicago in which traffic cameras were set up all over the city that literally were just there to determine whether you were speeding or not. They just capture the speed of the vehicle and its license plate. They don't capture pictures of the person inside. They're not making a judgment based on race. And yet the results were that brown and black people in Chicago were much more likely to get a traffic ticket out of it. Why would that be? And so at first, you could. You could imagine, like, somebody who doesn't want to look any more deeply than what the system tells you, because the system's neutral and the system's accurate. They could just come out of it and be like, well, obviously brown and black people just drive worse than white people do.

[Leo Laporte]

And that must be why it makes perfect sense.

[Jacob Ward]

Perfect sense. Look, the math Shows you. And these cameras are randomly distributed through the city. They're not in any particular neighborhood. Like they're, you know, everything on the face of it shows accuracy and neutrality. But it turns out that when you scratched a little bit and you got a little deeper into the system, what was really happening was when you have an even distribution of the same kind of cameras across the city where the speed limit is the same no matter what the streets are like, it turns out that the affluent neighborhoods have these tight little cute streets, whereas the working class and income challenged neighborhoods have enormous four lane change streets, but the same 30 mile an hour speed limit or whatever it is. So people in those places who are driving to work, they don't get to walk to work, they don't get to bike to work, they have to drive everywhere they go. By the nature of the design of that space, drive faster because it just looks like you should be able to drive faster. And they're getting hit with traffic tickets at a far greater rate. It took a lot of work to get in there and figure that kind of thing out. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It may even be more complicated than that because these cameras in most police departments in the US use Clearview AI. Well, that's right.

[Jacob Ward]

It could be that there are all kinds of things.

[Leo Laporte]

We now know that Clearview AI had always intended to go after immigrants, brown people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Jacob Ward]

I interviewed liberals that CEO a couple of times and he was fascinating in that same.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, quite a character.

[Jacob Ward]

And, and wanted to say again and again, look how neutral this is. This is just neutral. It's just a tool, you know, just like anything else.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the real threat is the impression of neutrality.

[Jacob Ward]

That's the thing is neutral.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Jacob Ward]

And it's, and we're so good as humans. I mean, literally the thesis of my book, because it's based on all of this research into, you know, all this research that behavioral scientists have done, is that the human brain is built to take shortcuts. It doesn't want to think through a decision. It wants to make the quickest possible decision. That's how we stayed alive for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years on the open plains was not by going, is this, do I like this? Is this apple a good apple? Is this the right kind of apple? Like, no, you see an apple, you grab it, you eat it, you know, is this guy coming up toward me a stranger, a friend? What's this deal? No, it doesn't matter. He's a stranger. I'm running away from him. Right? These instinctive decisions are what we are about. And so when we have a system like this that offers the opportunity to just offload our decision making about who gets a job, who gets a loan, who gets bail to this automated system, our brain can't help but do that. We are built to believe AI is good at what it does. And that I think, is the big threat. That's what we're talking about. And that's what these two John Patty and Elizabeth Pen are looking into right now.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a way to fight this. Our discord has put up this story from 2017 in the Arizona Republic newspaper. Dave Vodsmar, who lived in Phoenix, hated speed cameras. So he put on a monkey mask Every time he passed through the photo enforcement gauntlet on I17, Arizona 51 and Interstate 10. He was sent 37 unpaid photo enforcement tickets. But he said not one of them is there a picture where you can identify the driver. That's all monkeys.

[Paris Martineau]

That's commitment.

[Leo Laporte]

He got out of the tickets, although they can. Maybe you should get a ticket for driving in a monkey mask, but that's another. I don't know if there's a law against that.

[Paris Martineau]

So it doesn't look like it has appropriate eye hobby holes to be able.

[Leo Laporte]

To see where you're going. Yes. I think your peripheral vision is obstructed.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I once got zapped in Jersey City when we still had cameras. We got rid of them in New Jersey. And the images show clearly that they were wrong in the judgment. I was not in front of. There was a car in front of me that was bad. I was not. So I call a lawyer. And he said, yeah, you can pay me, but it doesn't. It goes after the car. It doesn't go after you because it doesn't know who's driving the car. So it can't. So you're not getting any points. You're not getting anything else. Just pay the 35 bucks.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good lawyer.

[Paris Martineau]

And you're like.

[Leo Laporte]

But the principal AI lawyer would say, write me the check right now. So, Jacob, you promise in the loop to prescribe a fix for this is. How do we defend ourselves against this? This is what's happening.

[Jacob Ward]

I wrote a check that I could not cash with that title. I have to tell you, that is a big. It's a big check. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

Blame your editor. Blame AI.

[Jacob Ward]

Yeah, I know, I know. Exactly.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So marketing.

[Jacob Ward]

The big thing, I will say that we learned or that I learned in putting this book together right. Is that there are times in human that basically all the great breakthroughs of human history when it comes to rising above our ancient horrible instincts where we killed strangers because they look different than us, right? Like that kind of life that we were living in the past. The way we got got to now was not by giving up our decision making systems to, you know, outside forces. It was the times when we got together and really dug in and did the hard work of trying to come together over something. So like, you know, I talked to one of the negotiators at the Good Friday Accords which put an end to the troubles in Northern Ireland. And you know, between Protestant and Catholic forces, there's. And the. He told me that, that it took them multiple years just to figure out where everyone was going to sit at the table. Literally where they were going to sit at the table. That's how long it took to just get the seating arrangements right.

[Leo Laporte]

People of Jeff Jarvis and my age remember this going on with the Vietnam treaty agreements, remember?

[Jacob Ward]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

The shape of the table took months.

[Jacob Ward]

You know, and this is the important lesson here, is that we are being fooled into thinking that if it can't happen in this financial quarter or under this presidential administration, then it can't be done. And that is just not how the world actually works. So, so that's one broad lesson. Another lesson, places that I'm seeing victory, if you want to call it this is, you know, I know that lawyers get a bad reputation and liability law is, you know, sort of, you know, there's all this rhetoric about ambulance chasing, research and the rest of it. But I have to say that when you actually look at the track record of some of these big law firms in the class action suits that they are bringing against companies for the things that they're doing with tech, there's a really interesting trend of actually winning in a way that I think could be positive for everybody. So if one example of this is what are called social casino games. These are games that simulate a casino game like slots or blackjack, but in such a way that you have to pay to play on your phone, but you cannot win real money back. It's the definition of a loser's game. And for years people were laughed out of court who tried to sue over these games. Because what happens is that typically these elderly, very lonely women, because that's the target market, would lose their life savings to these games. They become super addicted to them and, and couldn't help it but give away all of their money to these games. These days, those companies are beginning, beginning to settle for hundreds of millions of dollars in court. As courts are hearing more and more of these stories from these, like, sad old ladies who clearly were victimized. And the pattern being shown is that, you know, I talked to a guy once at, who had been a marketer at Facebook, which is one of the main ways that these companies find these elderly ladies. And I said, how do you find your people? He did the marketing for this product. He said, oh, well, we would just correlate low credit scores and geography and gpa, you know, like they were literally finding people that they could influence in this way, you know. And so, so those court cases are beginning to turn against those companies in a way that I think is really interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And then the last problem with state lotteries, but that's another story.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, this is, this is of. Jeff, man, you're speaking my language, brother. That is exactly right for me. The state lotteries and the new state endorsement of online phone, I mean phone based sports gambling. More than 30 states now made that legal. You know, the way that those states are working against the, the, well, the, the financial and wealth, you know, the welfare of their citizens. Crazy. Anyway, the last one, I'll say that that for me was an inspiring thing, was until 2013, there was a, a small but consistent number of deaths in the United States that were of a particularly horrific nature, which were parents typically accidentally, basically not seeing their kids in the driveway and a terrible thing and the kids dying. Right. It was about 60 to 100 deaths a year. Now, when you look at the standard number of deaths when it comes to something like motor vehicle accidents or gun deaths or alcohol deaths in this country, it's tens of thousands apiece. So 60 to 100 deaths doesn't make any sense in the math. And you know, I would point out that an AI system shown that would be, would not prioritize that. Right. The sheer math of it wouldn't make that a national priority. But when you get a bunch of senators together and you say parents are accidentally backing over their own children and there's a simple technological fix and that's putting backup cameras in these cars, you had a bipartisan group of senators come together and say, we're going to fix this problem. And they did in a very partisan time because we can recognize as humans that that is totally unacceptable and that there's an easy fix for that. And so today, you and I, we pay an extra thousand bucks for the car that we buy so that it has a mandatory backup camera in it. That's why there's those, the numbers of those deaths.

[Leo Laporte]

I will never drive a car without a backup camera. And I don't even have kids. I just.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, and I hit things all the time. And if you buy a new car today, you will always have a backup camera in it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what else?

[Jacob Ward]

Society have decided this. And I think that's the big lesson here.

[Leo Laporte]

Same thing happened with leaving kids in the car. Almost all the cars.

[Jacob Ward]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

I started noticing that a couple of years ago. My car would say, there's something in.

[Jacob Ward]

The back of the car. That's right, that's right, that's right. And so I just think, like, the lesson is, you know, people like to say, oh, there's nothing to be done, or, you know, we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube or any of that stuff. And I just think, you know, we are great at putting the toothpaste back in the tube. We put the toothpaste in the tube to begin with. Like, we're really good at solving these kinds of problems. It just takes longer than we think. And we won't do it for money.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll only just say it's going to hurt kids and you're safe.

[Jacob Ward]

Well, that's right. I mean, if you, you know, common human decency. And if. And if we just let the. The money making drive us, that's not going to solve.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a very nice, hopeful way to end the show. The book. And I want to. Not the show, but the interview. I really want to get you back, Jacob. You're fantastic. I wish you well.

[Jacob Ward]

Good. Appreciate it.

[Leo Laporte]

The Rip Current dot com. It covers the big hidden forces just beneath the surface that are threatening to pull us all out to sea. It's also what the book is about. And I could not recommend this more highly. Somehow it snuck under my radar when it came out in 2021. People should be reading it because you were right. You kind of. You kind of saw it ahead of time.

[Jacob Ward]

You know, I had one reviewer say, oh, this, this book, you know, I got pretty good reviews, but. But one person said, you know, it's what they say. It's like, you know, it's full of conjecture. It's paranoid and speculative. And I wish I'd been more paranoid and more speculative.

[Leo Laporte]

I wish.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm always saying that the loop, how.

[Leo Laporte]

Technology is creating a world without choices and how to fight back. And it's Roger McNamee said, the best book I've ever read about AI which is pretty high praise.

[Jacob Ward]

I'm very kind. Yeah. Thank you so much, Leo. And Jeff Paris. Great to be with you. Thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

So nice to meet you. Thank you.

[Paris Martineau]

Jacob.

[Leo Laporte]

Jacob Ward, everybody. You saw him on cnn, Al Jazeera, NBC, and now right here. And Joe Rogan and now right here. See that wasn't as bad. You know, we should offer him some neuro gum though, because I will say I'm buzzing.

[Paris Martineau]

Unfortunately I just couldn't see cup of coffee's worth of gum and it's.

[Leo Laporte]

I want some Neurogum.

[Paris Martineau]

Listen, this is not an endorsement of Neurogum. Don't purchase it. I just. It. It's here and I always remember it when I'm visiting my father and doing this podcast because it's within a few feet.

[Leo Laporte]

And here's some neuro gum for you, honey.

[Paris Martineau]

You know, the first time I, it was like Thanksgiving. I went up and I was like, oh, I'm not feeling well. Turns out the reason I wasn't feeling well is I was taking one of those antibiotics you're not supposed to drink on. And I was drinking on it. So I was ill. But he was like, you should have some neuro gum all along, huh? And you know, it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt any worse than what I did, I guess.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, I just wanted to show you. Last week of course we had Harper Reed on who we will have back. He was fantastic. He's. He persuaded me to try this command line based Claude code, which is a beta product from Anthropic that does the coding with you. So I installed it and I gave it as an example. One of the problems I was a little bit stuck on in the advent of code thing. Now I write in a language that I would have considered maybe a little too hard for Claude. A common lisp, an ancient language. Not only did it figure it out, it figured it out in seconds. This is its solution, literally in seconds. And then I had, I was able to ask it a few questions to say, could you add some tests to that to improve test coverage? It did. When it had a problem, by the way, the whole, the whole way through it. And these, you don't see this in the, in the transcript I'm showing it, it would ask me, okay, do you want me to make those changes? So it wasn't doing this without my approval, was showing me exactly this. And then it said, oh, I found some test failures, let's fix that. It literally, it not only saw the code, it edited the code, it edited in common lisp. It ran it through my common lisp interpreter, which it somehow figured out I had. And was able to fix all the bugs. It came up with the answer. It was remarkable. In fact, Darren Okey, who was one of our coders, we talk about them all the time, and who is an advent of code whiz, he's a professional coder who has 500 stars. He said in. In 10 years, the maximum number. He said, I may not do it next year because AI has really taken the fun out of it. I mean, if I. I'm not sure I would want to solve it this way. So now it's saying, do you want to proceed? I'm going to say yes. It does this all on the command line using Bash. It is very impressive and it cost about a nickel, by the way. Tree goes, another tree goes, another tree goes down. It's pretty impressive. Anyway, I thought I'd pass that along because we had Harper on and I wanted to say I have used. I did what he said and it worked better than I thought. It's very impressive. Very impressive. That's what the folks at Duolingo said when. When they said, hey, you know, we're going to be an AI First Company. You probably use Duolingo, an app that teaches you languages. We talked about this with Paul yesterday, earlier today, actually, on Windows Weekly. He likes Duolingo. They've doubled the amount of content in the matter of a few days by declaring themselves an AI First Company. And instead of using contractors to create their lessons, they. They're using AI to generate them. And they've generated, I think, 148 new lessons. They. He also, by the way, sent this to an email to all his staff and said, don't worry, we're not going to fire you right away.

[Paris Martineau]

We're going to fire some other people first.

[Leo Laporte]

They're gonna. He said, we're gonna begin eventually. People without the benefits, employee performance reviews. This isn't about replacing duos with AI, he said, it's about removing bottlenecks so we can do more.

[Paris Martineau]

We want you made up by people.

[Leo Laporte]

To focus on creative work and real problems. We're just not. You don't do the repetitive tasks anymore, so.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And he said that every. When they want to hire anybody, they've got to answer why this can't be done by AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we'd rather move with urgency, he said, and take small, occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment. This is exactly what Jacob was saying. Right? It's just, okay, we'll do it. We give in.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But in some measure of sympathy for them, Google just announced a new AI Lab thing where they're doing language stuff now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. So they. The first thing. I saw this when our favorite Notebook LM announced that they could do those little podcasts they do with your data in 50 other languages.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I wonder what the voices sound like.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. I'm surprised you haven't turned it into German. You speak German? Take your LM notebook, LM results and say, hey, can you do that in German for me? The age of the real time deep fake fraud is here. This is from 404 Joseph. I love 404. They're doing such good work. Fraudsters.

[Paris Martineau]

Fantastic work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Are able to change their race, facial hair, voice and more during live video calls with very little effort.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, one of those photos is scary up there. That one top right. The. The woman on the phone is terrifying.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I don't know what's going on there, to be honest. Be honest with you. At least now I saw you're way more gorgeous and more beautiful than you were in the photo you sent me. An older white man with a graying beard says during a Skype video call. He's talking to an elderly woman who appears to be in her car, staring into the phone's front facing camera. She laughs at the compliment and the smiling man keeps going. I think you should send security to keep you safe. So no one comes. Turns out he is a deep fake and she is being defrauded. The bearded man does not exist. He's a real time deep fake. The. The. The person behind him. It doesn't look anything like that, of course. She's. This is what they call a romance scam. And you could see how it works. You can, you can look gorgeous. So I don't know what there is to say about this. Of course, inevitably, as soon as AI achieves a certain capability, the scammers are going to turn to it and start using it. But good news, though, we're going to be learning AI in schools now, in K through 12. So we're going to train a whole new generation of people able to do this. Except don't get a job as an AI prompt engineer. Did you see this in the Wall Street Journal? The hottest.

[Paris Martineau]

I want to know what was the turnaround from when the Wall Street Journal was saying all the jobs are going to be AI prompt engineers to don't get a job as an AI prompt engineer. Because it's got to be like nine months, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

It has numbers in there on how many. How quickly the searches for the job went up and then how they came down.

[Leo Laporte]

Two years ago, prompt engineering was one of the hottest jobs in tech, fetching salaries of $200,000 on the promise of those people. Now, any company's AI whisperer. This is the article by Isabel Busquette in the Wall Street Journal. Now the role is basically obsolete thanks to the breakneck speed of AI development.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, as I said to Jason earlier today, it's also because we've all kind of learned how to speak AI. We've all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we're all prompt engineers. But maybe even more importantly, the AI no longer needs to be stroked, cosseted, you know, carefully crafted. It under. It kind of is better at understanding what you're looking for and what to give you, I think. Don't you do find it as difficult to get the answers you want from AI as it used to be? I think it's easier.

[Paris Martineau]

Jeff, what do you think you use AI.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm not using it for answers that much, except simple stuff.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, same. I. Perhaps that's naive of me, but I don't. There aren't that many things I need it for.

[Benito]

Hi, this is Benito. I've got a quick question. Like, are there people who have prompt engineer jobs right now still?

[Leo Laporte]

Apparently, unless they got fired in six months. All right, let's ask. Hey, anybody? Are you a prompt engineer? Anybody in our chat rooms? Anybody listening to the show? It seemed kind of like a hypey job even then. I'll be honest with you.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, you know what job AI is never going to take? I just posted a clip in the Discord, if you want to play it. It's never going to take the hot career of a venture capitalist, according to Marc Andreessen. No, he says, you know, it's actually really incredible that AI is going to disrupt every industry except for the job that he has, because it's so special and unique that. That adequate. That efficiently distributing capital never be done.

[Leo Laporte]

Capitalists in the last 70 years, has missed most of the great companies of his generation. Right. Like, so the great VCs is just me, or does he a record of getting. Does he look like a Conehead from Saturday Night Live?

[Paris Martineau]

No, he looks like the movie Coneheads. Conehead, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Just. It's just that's what runs through my.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Anybody else would. Would be wearing an ironic hat, but not him.

[Leo Laporte]

Not him. I don't know. 2 out of 10 or something are the great companies of the decade. Right. And so, you know, if it was a science, you could eventually have somebody who just like dials it in and gets eight out of 10. But in, in, in, in. In the real world, it's not like that. Better not be. I'll never let it be like that. If it ever is, I'm killing it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He speaks like someone who's never interrupted.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So I have to press stop. I have to press pause to get a word in.

[Benito]

Android sounds like a guy who only thinks his domain is the one that has deep knowledge, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah.

[Benito]

Only his domain that is like really deep. Everything else is simple.

[Paris Martineau]

Everything else is surface level and can be automated away. But he's the only one doing real thinking.

[Leo Laporte]

I got a proposal for you. I mean, I would bet already somebody has written AIs that has ingested all the stock market data for the last 50 years and could do a pretty good job of trading.

[Benito]

This is the job AI should be doing. Is that stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, right. So I'm going to guess that's already happened. How much harder is it? Ingest all the venture capital information of the last decade or two and pick some winners. Maybe you can't. Maybe the winners. Maybe it's so hard.

[Benito]

No, it's pattern recognition over large data sets. That's exactly what AI seems like it. Yeah, exactly what AI does pattern recognition.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, this is why computational trading like this is why automated trading firms exist, is the ability to use machines to. To identify spots in the market where you can make money over your competitors.

[Leo Laporte]

The founder of Y Combinator, Paul Graham, does have a response on X to this post from Marc Andreessen. He says if AI does everything else, there won't be founders for VCs to pick. All the things that would have been built by founders will already have been built by OpenAI.

[Paris Martineau]

I really like the VCs congratulating themselves, Twitter responding. Stop tagging me in this, guys.

[Leo Laporte]

And how about this? Too much drip for AI to replace.

[Paris Martineau]

Do you need me to translate that for you?

[Leo Laporte]

Do you guys, what is drip?

[Paris Martineau]

It's like swagger. It's. It's a. A sense of, you know. But some could. It was originally fashion sense.

[Benito]

Yeah, exactly. Clothes.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, originally fashion sense. But now drip is more of a mindset like drip can be. You know, you can have drip without it being specifically swagged out. Clothes.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I would say my son has drip because today I have to play you this video. He was. Let me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You gotta have the rest.

[Leo Laporte]

He was doing an ad for tequila and they surprised him with a mariachi pant and he got. They all got in the elevator with him and now he's on a plane to Florida where he's going to cook for Diplo.

[Paris Martineau]

Apparently, in some ways saying Diplo. More like drip low.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, how about. He also said Quavo and Chantelle Jeffries, if you know who they are. Do you know who they are?

[Paris Martineau]

Nope. But I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

You're too old now.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm just not online in that way. I'm not online in the.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, he's gonna party like it's 1999. Apparently, he's. You know, it's funny, there's this whole celebrity chef thing.

[Paris Martineau]

How old Was he in 1999?

[Leo Laporte]

7. No, 5.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is the restaurant still on. On schedule?

[Leo Laporte]

Mayday.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Mayday. You saw that?

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I'm sorry. Memorial Day. Mayday's Memorial Day. End of the month.

[Paris Martineau]

I was wondering, literally, just this last week, just this last week, I was like, someone was asking me if I wanted to go to Minnesota or something over Memorial. I was like, I swear to God, I have something.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm doing a Memorial Day weekend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm going to Salt Hanks opening and I emailed you. Leo, our friend Craig wants to know all about.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, he's kept up to date.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I'm worried because.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. How many plus ones can you get to this?

[Leo Laporte]

Leo, if I say to Henry Craig Newmark wants to come, he's going to say, I don't know who that is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Just like I don't know who Quavo is. If I say Craigslist, you'd know that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, crow. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Of Craig. The Craig. The one and only.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Just his name. They are.

[Leo Laporte]

We managed to get that in after all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Students are all starstruck.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they really? Oh, yeah. Because he invented something that's still around. It's still.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They use.

[Leo Laporte]

Popular. They use.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. No, tell him Craig's gotta come because I want to meet Craig.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. I will send him an email saying I have. I need some. Jeff, do you want to go, too? I'm not going to go.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. What do you mean you're not.

[Paris Martineau]

You're not going to go?

[Leo Laporte]

No. Lisa told me. She said, don't go. You don't. You'll steal his thunder. You don't want to go to opening day. Go a week or two later. You don't want to. You don't want to steal his son.

[Paris Martineau]

No. You got to come and then hang out in the back with us.

[Leo Laporte]

Bus with the cool kids.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Hang on the back of the bus with us.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I'm not a cool kid, so that just leaves Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

You Guys can be my entourage.

[Leo Laporte]

We can hang out with Diplo and Quavo.

[Paris Martineau]

Me and Craig can be the cool kids, and you can be our own entourage.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Craig would be happy with that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. All right. Maybe I'll think about it. It is a Saturday. I'm not doing anything.

[Paris Martineau]

So Memorial Day weekend, it's a really fun time to be in the city because no one's in New York City on Memorial Day weekend.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe that's a bad time to have a grand opening. No, I mean, would students be there?

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, yes, people are there.

[Leo Laporte]

Right? It's near nyu. It's on Bleecker Street. Yeah.

[Benito]

It's still New York, Leo. It's still New York.

[Paris Martineau]

It's still New York. It's just, you know, a person or.

[Leo Laporte]

Two in town instead of it being.

[Paris Martineau]

150% of New York, it's like 95.

[Leo Laporte]

There'll be a few cabbies, a barber or two. There'll be some people there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There'll be the line of tourists in front of John's.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, of course. The tourists. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's lots of tourists.

[Leo Laporte]

I. This is going to be hard for me not to go next door and get some pizza from John.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, then we also have to go to Burger America.

[Leo Laporte]

I do.

[Paris Martineau]

We can do a. We can do a full day. We can do some fasting in advance.

[Leo Laporte]

It is so much food.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It is so great.

[Leo Laporte]

I will go. If you bring the neuro gummies.

[Paris Martineau]

I will. Listen, there's a whole.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a whole sack of them. I like it how they have, like, I'm jumping kind of pseudo medical labeling. Like, they don't make it bright and colorful. It's kind of a pale blue with white. So it looks kind of medical. It looks kind of like.

[Paris Martineau]

And then at the bottom, it says in the zone every day. Again, I don't recommend or endorse this product.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you sure there's not, like, micro doses of hallucinogens in it or anything?

[Paris Martineau]

It says it's specially formulated with natural caffeine, L theanine and. And B vitamins to sustain the mental endurance necessary to maintain your focus. Asterisk. What does the asterisk mean?

[Leo Laporte]

What is the asterisk?

[Paris Martineau]

What is the *?

[Leo Laporte]

The FDA has not approved any.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it literally is. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not designed to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease.

[Leo Laporte]

Except the disease of. I have too much money in my pocket. Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna take a Little break because this is the new truncated edition of Intelligent Machines. This is the point in the show where I say, I give up. You guys pick some stories, we'll talk about them. Actually, there's a mint of huge number of stories. Wikipedia is going to start using AI. WhatsApp is working on putting private AI chats in the cloud. Meta did its announcements. It's Llama Khan was yesterday.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We have a Zuck video in Glass video from Zuck.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I can go on and on the take. I do want to rail against Take it Down act, which sounds on the surface to be a good thing. It is now sitting on the president's desk. It probably by the end of this show will be law. And that is a terrifying thought. Even though it sounded like a good thing and it was passed 98 to 2 in the Senate. It is not a good moral panic.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Can do. The. The group chat that Andreessen's in is a good story.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Apparently all these fancy people are all talking amongst themselves. We're not involved.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We're not involved. We're not invited.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not letting us in.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jason's probably there.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I guarantee you not Jason's there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Not. Not our Jason Calacanis.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I think is because Amy Webb's always saying, well, I'm in these chats. And I always say, well, can I get in these chats? She said, no, I think Amy Webb's in there. That's who I think she's a futurist. We gotta get it in.

[Paris Martineau]

We gotta get a. We've got to get a Jeffrey Goldberg. Yeah, we've got to get a.

[Leo Laporte]

Invite JG into the chat.

[Paris Martineau]

Invite jg but we can be jg.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Benito]

You got to find out who the messy person is in the chat.

[Leo Laporte]

Who's the messy person? And get on their contact list. The. The whole thrust of the story was, you know what? They used to say this about the Bohemian Grove, Jeff, remember?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah. The. Into the woods up there. And they make all sorts of deals without our involvement. And then the world, you know, the Trilateral Commission, Trilateral Committee. So now they say it's all in signal chats. It's just the same old story. Of course, rich people talk to each other. They don't talk to us. Part of the story was that, that the, that there's influence going on in these chats and that they're being directed in a. You know, they're being blue pilled or red.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It tells what they're talking about. They have too much Money, time and time.

[Leo Laporte]

I always wonder, how does Elon tweet hundreds of times a day?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I know. Well, the gum.

[Leo Laporte]

It all comes back to that, doesn't it? You're watching intelligent machines. Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau. Great to have you both. Our show today brought to you by Big id. Love this company. The next generation AI powered data, security, compliance and privacy solution. How do they do all of that in one thing? Well, I'll explain. AI is transforming businesses, obviously. But that's a risk for you, isn't it? You've got data risk, you know, revealing corporate, you know, secret data bias. You've also got compliance challenges. So the real challenge is adopting AI responsibly. And that's where Big ID really helps. They deliver end to end AI and data governance to help enterprises manage risk, enforce policies and ensure responsible AI adoption. You know, you want to use AI, there's a lot of value to applying AI to your corporate data, but you've got to do it right. You want to make sure AI only access is safe, to use relevant data and automatically tags sensitive information by policy and type, leaving it out of the training set if necessary. Big ID is the only leading solution that can uncover dark data through AI classification, identify AI risk, manage data lifecycle. You know, you don't want to use old data either and scale your AI strategy. And the beauty is it integrates with your existing tech stack. It doesn't. You don't abandon your existing tech stack. It has unmatched data source coverage and allows you to automate privacy and security workflows. Take action on data risks with automated remediation orchestrations. Automate privacy management, including regulatory compliance, data rights requests and more. Wouldn't it be nice just to offload that? Let the AI handle it partners include ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, of course, Google, of course, AWS everything you use right now. And with big IDs advanced AI models, you'll gain visibility and control over all your data. It's the platform intuit named number one for data classification and accuracy, speed and scalability. Now you might say, well, who uses Big id? Well, lots of people do. But I'll give you one great example. The United States Army. Big ID helped the US army illuminate dark data and automate data retention. It's a big problem. Imagine the army has data stores everywhere on prem in the cloud in all different formats. Here's the testimonial. This comes from US Army Training and Doctrine Command. They said, quote the first wow moment with Big ID came with being able to have that single interface that inventories a variety of data holdings, including structured and unstructured Data across emails, zip files, SharePoint databases and more. I mean, imagine the army has all this stuff, right? They finally could see it all in one place. He says to see that mass and to be able to correlate across all those is completely novel. I've never seen a capability that brings this together like Big ID does. Big ID could do it for the Army. They could do it for you. Cnbc recognized Big ID as one of the top 25 startups for the enterprise. They were named to the Inc 5000 and the Deloitte 500 four years in a row. The publisher of Cyber Defense magazine says, quote, Big ID embodies three major feature judges look for to become winners. 1. Understanding tomorrow's threats today, providing a cost effective solution and innovating in unexpected ways that can help mitigate cyber risk and get one step ahead of the next breach. Start protecting your sensitive data wherever your data lives. @bigid.com Im get a free demo to see how BigID can help your organization reduce data risk and accelerate the adoption of generative AI. Again, that's B I G I D By the way, there's a free guide there that will help you understand the risks of gen AI and data driven strategies to ensure responsible and compliant AI adoption. It's free. It's waiting for you. Bigid.com Im we thank him so much for supporting intelligent machines. Good job, big ID. Good job. I forgot to turn my Apple reactions off.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think we turned it on last week.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's why. And he couldn't figure out how to anyway. All right, what's your story, Paris?

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, what's my story? That's a great question.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you see, that's the problem when you get all hopped up a Neurogum I did get.

[Paris Martineau]

My attention span is completely shot. I was just reading a story as you're talking about how AI we don't entirely know how it thinks. However, I'll do a brief silly one first because I haven't finished reading it. Much better tunnels section at the bottom because we haven't done tunnels. We haven't. We haven't done a tunnel in a while.

[Leo Laporte]

So Paris briefly stories was obsessed with people digging tunnels in their backyard.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I'm not entirely certain that it would be. I was obsessed. A lot of interesting tunnel news happened to come to me and who am I coincidence to you know, to receive it? There was a man making an eel pit in his cistern. A woman building A not up to code tunnel through her backyard. And then a large acidic community tunneling beneath Atlantic Ave. In Brooklyn. That really captivated me. And now there's a story in the New York Times about how bridges and tunnels in Colorado are helping animals commute, which is cute. And a weird.

[Leo Laporte]

Looks like it's a regular everyday, you know, bridge, but it's not. It's just a little mud path.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We have those near me and you're too just. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a bridge for animals. Oh, and there's a pronghorn smiling for the camera if you go down farther. Oh, really quite cute.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's an adolescent black bear making use of a crossing. Mule deer grouped at left and elk at right. Sometimes use the crossing together and coyotes, or coyotes, as we say, cross daily. All right, I'm still getting a longhorn.

[Paris Martineau]

We. You gotta. You gotta go down. It's worth it.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a deer in the dark.

[Paris Martineau]

Listen, deer. It's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

I see these all day, every day.

[Paris Martineau]

Keep going, keep going.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there we go.

[Paris Martineau]

That's. That's what we need.

[Leo Laporte]

Smiling pronghorn.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know what a pronghorn is, but I love it it.

[Leo Laporte]

They smile.

[Paris Martineau]

Anyway though this article had tunnels in the headline, it was surprisingly light on tunnel pictures. So I included a second one in case any of those tunnel heads out there really wanted.

[Leo Laporte]

We need it.

[Paris Martineau]

We need some glimpse inside of the mountain tunnel that carries water. Southern California. And it's a lot of tunnel picks they want.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a lot of money for the LA Times too. Look, so some guy I don't know. Should you be walking down this tunnel?

[Paris Martineau]

Well, there's no water in it. I suppose it's all right, but it's a pretty important. It's a pretty important tunnel.

[Leo Laporte]

It's 13 miles through the mountain. Oh, it's shut down for maintenance right now.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's recently so the Metropolitan Water District recently offered visitors a look inside the tunnel because this is how they.

[Leo Laporte]

Steal tunnel from water from Colorado, I might might add. Well, you know, this is. By the way, I just want to point out the people in Arizona and Colorado. It's a little dry in Arizona right now. You wonder why?

[Paris Martineau]

Because the Colorado more like rain data centers to process all of your dumb AI searches. It's your fault. You're the one stealing water from Colorado and you should be ashamed.

[Leo Laporte]

It is a. There is a little bit of a battle, I think over the water in the Colorado river, which.

[Paris Martineau]

No, I mean I think that close to la. I Do think it's a really interesting question of, with all of this money and time and resources that we are pouring into developing homegrown American AI, where are we going to get the water from? Because these data centers need massive amount of water, and it needs a massive amount of resources to process that water once it is used to cool down whatever they're called, the stacks of computers in the data centers. And it's very interesting because I haven't got to the bottom personally, but I'm sure there's an answer out there. A lot of these data centers are being built in very warm places like Arizona because there's, like, space for it. It. But that also carries the problem of not a lot of water and not a lot of cool days.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's a good point. Elon's using tunnels. Elon's gotten a little bit of trouble because Grok is using gas generators to power its operations centers. Gas from the electric car guy and.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And neighbors are going, those generators are running day and night. All right, that was a good story. Thank you for the tunnels. A little. A little tunnel time. Jeff, you got a story for us?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, let's start with a similar light moment. Line 97.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, let me go to line 97. Actually was. I was sucked into some LEO base.

[Paris Martineau]

They talked about this on Twit this week.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, they did? Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. It was our title, you can't lick a badger twice. So I think this is actually one of the reasons I find AI endearing. It wants to make you happy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Last week, the phrase you can't lick a badger twice unexpectedly went viral on social media, writes Kyle Orland in Ars Technica. The nonsense sentence, which was likely never uttered by a human before last week, was the poster child for the newly discovered way Google searches AI overviews, which we've all got now, can make up plausible sounding explanations for anything. People would post a saying and then ask, what does it mean? And. And Google would obligingly say, well, for instance, the idiom you can't lick a badger twice means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once. It's a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they're unlikely to fall for the same trick again. Licking in this context means to trick or deceive someone. The badger is a wild animal. And the phrase likely originates from the historical sport of badger baiting, where dogs were used to harass badgers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What was the phrase that Paris had to translate for us before.

[Paris Martineau]

Dripped out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Why don't you ask ChatGPT what that means later?

[Leo Laporte]

Deal.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let's see.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I'm sure we'll give you the actual answer.

[Leo Laporte]

A fake saying. How about.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, I see.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. What should our fake idiom be?

[Leo Laporte]

You can't. You could. Oh, I know. You can bring a podcaster to the water, but you can't make it dripped out.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, what does that mean? Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Now do we have to ask it? Like, what does this mean?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

Hold on.

[Leo Laporte]

What does this old timey saying? Let's see. Oh, see, they've, they've, they've, They've taken it out. AI safety strikes again.

[Jeff Jarvis]

See, that's the problem with you.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Guard rails takes all the fun out of life.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe we'll go to AI mode and see what AI mode says.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Guardrail is a new word for woke.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, here it is. Here's what it means. Oh, you know what? They're smart. The original proverb, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. The podcast version. This saying playfully applies the same principle to podcasts and technology. You can provide a podcast with a strong Internet connection, but you can't force the listeners unreliable, reliable Internet or phone to maintain a consistent connection and avoid dropouts. Oh, I said you can't make drops out. Oh, I said dropped out, not dripped out. There you go. Oh, well.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Just as stupid. Anyway, I think this is an acute and adorable feature of AI and also.

[Paris Martineau]

You can lick a badger twice, can you? Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

If you can lick it once, it's.

[Paris Martineau]

Probably another one, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Lick me once and.

[Paris Martineau]

No, I was going to say all the barriers to licking a badger are overcome in licking it the first time. The second time. You have practice, you have experience.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You are ready, you are trained, you are brilliant.

[Leo Laporte]

Absolutely right. So the Leo bait you put in there. Apparently I'm not alone in having an AI listen to my every word. Our. Our good friend and beloved personal technology common columnist at the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Always first person, always.

[Leo Laporte]

She's. It's always about. Joanna has been using B, which is cool, and a few others. She must have. She has connections because I couldn't get the limitless pin and. And I do have the.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, you paid for it, didn't you?

[Leo Laporte]

I paid for it, but I haven't gotten it yet, so I'm a little unhappy about that.

[Paris Martineau]

Does she note that in her review?

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe they gave her one, you think?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Privilege.

[Leo Laporte]

I recorded everything I said for three months. AI has replaced my memory I said be limitless and plot wearables, record everything you say and use AI to provide summaries to do's and a slice, slightly terrifying glimpse of the future. She's where? There's the bee. She's wearing it right there. I've been wearing a wire everywhere since February. Oh, I've been doing it since January. Joanna within hours of wearing the bee, I was blown away by how quickly it turned ramblings and random chatter into actionable, useful information. To allow me to quote myself from February 24th 5:15pm this bracelet is really effing creepy. You know, I'm a little actually we had to be founders on remember early on in the show. I'm a little disappointed that it hasn't made any progress since then. Like it's pretty much just continuing to do the same thing. And I don't know if that's a limitation of what AI can do with all this bountiful content I'm providing it with or if the I don't know, I'm not paying for.

[Paris Martineau]

I like that she notes though, these apps recap your conversations often like reading a bad biography. B summary from April 9 Joanna's day was a blend of familial responsibilities and intense professional engagements. She ended the day by listening to music by Sting. Riveting stuff. Can't wait for the movie adaption.

[Leo Laporte]

That's pretty much the kind of thing that I'm getting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It always reminds me of my kids nursery school reports.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's very much like that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jeffy had a good day.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Let's see. I'm just curious what. Let me just read what B is saying. It won't. It won't have an analysis of my day today yet, I don't think. Well, let me see. Yeah, let's do yesterday. Yesterday April 29th was a tech day blending tech filled day blending conference strategies.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What day is it?

[Leo Laporte]

Apple Innovations and a lively podcast banter. Let me see if I can show you this.

[Paris Martineau]

I do enjoy that she has a breakdown of how Limitless recorded her talking to her dog Bowser. And it includes things like a timeline of someone scolded Bowser for chewing something. Speaker 1 said, Bowser, what are you doing? Can you not chew your whatever browser?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's. But that's exactly the kind of thing the beast says. I'm a little disappointed. I want to get this Limitless pin because the other thing that the tested.

[Paris Martineau]

She tested bees on phone AI processing and it was not as good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well we've done it before right. That's my J.K. simmons. B. What do you have to say to Joanna Stern in her review of you in the Wall Street Journal today? It's not as fast.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow. No comment. See Bill Bell.

[Leo Laporte]

Joanna Stern's review in the Wall Street Journal highlighted my capabilities and how I've been designed to assist users in various tasks. If you want, I can summarize specific points from her review or discuss any themes or insights she touched on. Just let me know what you're interested.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What did you think of it?

[Leo Laporte]

My real interest is in the legality of this. Does she talk to any lawyers? Sounds like it did. Read it. Which is interesting. Or maybe it's reading it right now. It sounds like you're curious about the legal implications related to AI technologies and their usage, possibly referencing concerns about privacy, consent, or data security. Joanna Stern may have discussed those aspects in her review, but if you want to dive deeper into those legal topics.

[Paris Martineau]

Do you know if it did or not?

[Leo Laporte]

She talked to Anton Ashton Kirsch, a lawyer. Shut up. I would make sure everyone.

[Paris Martineau]

I know that name. Because, as she notes, Madison, Wicker, Wicket and Lehrer maintain a state by state list of recording laws that I have passed out to colleagues before. They have a. A website where it tells you the party consent laws.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Ashton says, I'd make sure everyone has consented verbally. Do you consent, by the way? I should have asked you this two months ago.

[Jeff Jarvis]

About five years ago.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, yeah. No, I don't consent to this podcast being recorded. I hope that no one's listening to this.

[Leo Laporte]

While the risk might be low, he adds, we could never recommend people take that risk. See, this is the problem I have with lawyers, by the way. Their whole job is to avoid all risks. They're always going to tell you, well, I wouldn't do that because it could be risky. And that's all I ever get from lawyers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Most lawyers at Time Inc. Who would help you do what you wanted to.

[Leo Laporte]

Do, that's really what you want, right? Is.

[Paris Martineau]

I will say I've worked with one media lawyer who I would say is quite good at this. Yeah, he would often. I mean, he would sometimes recommend being more conservative, but most of his notes were to my editor's chagrin, being like, wow, great stuff here. Or a strange line edit. And then my editor would be like, we're not paying you to edit. We're paying you to. To see whether we're going to get.

[Leo Laporte]

Sued or not, she said. She pointed out that most of her recordings were in New Jersey and New York, which Are one party consent states.

[Paris Martineau]

Yep. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Which means all you have to do is consent to your own recording and you're done. California is a two party state. Of course I don't. Just for your information, it's not hearing the podcast because it's muted when I'm on.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It'd be a lot more fun if it did.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

It just thinks that you talk to.

[Leo Laporte]

Yourself all the time, Leo.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Couldn't you put it in a different room playing the podcast?

[Leo Laporte]

I could do that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, you should.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, maybe I'll do that from now.

[Paris Martineau]

You should check out the Discord for a truly haunting image.

[Leo Laporte]

The Discord has become really adept at images. Did you see the. Did you see the Scissorhands.

[Paris Martineau]

Coneheads?

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's got a three coneheads. Me, Paris, and Jeff. And the tag is let's all be VC heads. Intelligent machines. 817. I think we've got our album art. Thank you, Joe.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We also have a lion and a badger. The badger's winning.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, our album art from Sunday was me licking a badger ice cream cone.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's right. That's where I saw that I shouldn't have wrote the. The story. I forgot that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I. No, look, look. We do stories that were on Twitter all the time because it's not necessarily the same audience.

[Paris Martineau]

Whoa. Okay, this one's kind of cool.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Whoa, Whoa.

[Paris Martineau]

Kind of metal.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go. I asked them to do Paris Scissorhands and Pretty Fly for a size. This guy, apparently.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it is my cousin. But have you seen the photo of you licking the badger ice cream cone?

[Leo Laporte]

I have seen it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. For the.

[Paris Martineau]

Here's.

[Leo Laporte]

And then, remember we talked about shingy at the end of the show. Here's your shingy hair. I like that.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow. That's great.

[Leo Laporte]

You could get away with it.

[Paris Martineau]

Got my back. I could. I could.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's after enough nicotine gum.

[Paris Martineau]

Let me see if I have a photo of me with a mohawk from.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you used to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You had a mohawk?

[Leo Laporte]

I had a blonde.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, no, I had a blonde mohawk for, like, many years, but it was.

[Leo Laporte]

Kind of shaved or just a foam. I mean. I mean, Jacob had a faux hawk.

[Paris Martineau]

I was gonna say kind of a faux hawk in the sense that I had, like, short crop shaved hair and then longer short hair that was blonde. Like, the shaved hair on the sides was dark. Was dark, and it went all the way to the back and then blonde in the middle. But the photo I'm talking of is once when I did a costume was Elizabeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And I had a full mohawk that said.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you think Paris is talking faster than usual?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think she's a little bit excited. I don't know why she's talking so fast.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know. It could be. It could be something. My heart is beating quite fast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So you want an interesting story.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, before we do that, I'm going to try something using ChatGPT4.5 that Darren has suggested. Let me see. I have to go to 4. 5. Ask it. It says, ask for a bunch of one liners roasting a person. I'm going to say Elon Musk. Give me a bunch of one liners roasting Elon Musk. Don't hold back and use recent events. He says it's quite funny. So let's see if we can. What kind of stuff we're gonna get out of this.

[Paris Martineau]

While we're waiting for that, I'm. I'm putting mohawk photos in the discord.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Of efficiency fire meteorologists during tornado season. Well, that isn't even funny. Tesla's autopilot is so advanced, it can drive the company into the ground without human input. Okay. Pretty good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Pretty good. Starlink's global reach now extending ethical concerns to every corner of the Earth. X users based is shrinking faster than Musk's list of unburned bridges. Wow, these are good. You're right, Darren. If I ever have to do a roast, I will be. I'll be ready.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Musk's version of free speech. Say, check the sources.

[Benito]

These are jokes other people made. Probably. Check the sources.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe you think they're from other people.

[Benito]

There's a sources tab at the bottom.

[Leo Laporte]

A running list. No, the sources is a running list of his busy, biggest con. Oh, you're right. 34 of the funniest roasts of Elon Musk.

[Benito]

See, like you grew up. But he just stole them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Say, that's pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

You're sentient.

[Jeff Jarvis]

See if it has a sense of humor. Isn't it?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think they're direct. Some of them are quoting Ed Zittran. All right, let me get some Paris Martineau mohawks.

[Paris Martineau]

I've posted exactly one.

[Leo Laporte]

That's cute. So you didn't shave your side. You just.

[Paris Martineau]

You just. I mean, that's not the blonde. There's. That's not the blonde one I'd have to find.

[Leo Laporte]

It's all right.

[Paris Martineau]

That's fine. That's the first one.

[Leo Laporte]

You're very young. In this picture, are you.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, that's me in high school. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg. Yesterday was Llama day. You know, I should have watched.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I forgot to. I forgot.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did you guys cover it live?

[Leo Laporte]

No, he's planning a premium. No, we didn't know a premium. You know, it's funny and I, I, I take the blame for this, but I've kind of lost interest in covering Meta. I don't feel like they're doing anything interesting. Am I wrong?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Their AI is interesting. Llama's very interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Feel like it's behind the other guys.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're the open source one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they're open source. M. Zuckerberg is planning a premium tier for Facebook. Oh, no. For AI. For Meta's AI app. A premium tier and ads. So they're.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Have you downloaded, have you downloaded the new app?

[Leo Laporte]

App? What Chat GPT does. What is the new app?

[Jeff Jarvis]

So the new app is weird because it's supposedly social, but it's really just people sharing made up images with no context.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this from Facebook or Instagram?

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is Meta's AI app.

[Paris Martineau]

Isn't it supposed to show you what your friends are asking?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Meta AI here is Prada. As if Prada had dresses made of salmon fillets.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just crashes the Met gala. Joe Esposito is 10 times better than Meta AI.

[Leo Laporte]

We're lucky. We have very good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We have Joe.

[Leo Laporte]

We have the real users here. So what did. I'm trying to find. You said there's a video of his talk from.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, it's in there. It's in the rundown. I put it online.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay. I did ask Chad chatgpt, upon recommendation from someone in the chat, to roast you. Leo. And one part of it that's actually really funny is Leo's the only guy who could host a three hour show about AI and somehow make it about his printer not working. And I do think that's actually pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

That's great. Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Line 103. It's worth it just for seeing him be even geekier in the glasses.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's, he's. These are the Orion glasses they've been talking. Talking about. Oh, wow. Let me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't use it.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know how to use it. Hey, everyone. We built a new thing for you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There's almost a billion people who are using Meta AI across our apps now. So we made a new standalone Meta.

[Leo Laporte]

AI app for you to check out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Meta AI is designed to be your personal AI.

[Leo Laporte]

That means in a first, it's designed around voice conversations. You open up the app and you can talk to it about whatever you want, from the news to an issue you're dealing with to just anything that you want to learn about.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's also designed to be personalized. We're starting that off really basic with just a little bit of context about your.

[Leo Laporte]

Your interests. But over time, you're going to be able to let meta AI know a.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Whole lot about you and the people.

[Leo Laporte]

You care about from across the privacy. SCREAMING we also designed this social feed so you can. That's what you're seeing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All kinds of different ways that people are creating stuff. With meta AI, it's really quite fun.

[Leo Laporte]

To check out, actually a good idea for an app so you're going to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Be able to use because it has no context.

[Leo Laporte]

You manage your metaglasses and other kinds of AI devices that we're going to be building in the future. So anyway, this is the beginning of.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What is going to be a long.

[Leo Laporte]

Journey to build this out. But. But, you know, go check it out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let us know what you think.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, apparently.

[Paris Martineau]

Everyone stop.

[Jacob Ward]

Stop.

[Leo Laporte]

Mark, stop. Okay. Apparently it's the same app I've already been using for the glasses.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I want to note in the video and in the caption there's some weasel words going on there. He says we decided to launch this because over a billion monthly actives use meta AI, which doesn't mean there's a billion monthly users of meta AI, but that a billion of meta's monthly active users of all Meta products have used AI at some point. So it's not. I think I just thought that was interesting. They could be there. Cannot say they have a billion people using AI because that's just not true.

[Leo Laporte]

So I have logged on to my Wayfarer glasses, which I'm wearing. Oh. I have to join the network so I can download all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Aren't you supposed to scrape the Ray Ban plastic off the lens?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think you can.

[Jacob Ward]

Really.

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's built in. That's called. Really, Jeff?

[Paris Martineau]

I don't like that.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't either.

[Paris Martineau]

A word right on my.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's right out of your peripheral vision.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't care about you. I care about me having to stare at the brand. It's an ad.

[Leo Laporte]

I've asked the same question and I don't. No, it doesn't have. It's. No, it's in the. It's in the lens, I think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

I Know all Ray Bans do that. Let me ask. Hey, Meta, is there any way to scrape the Ray Ban logo off the lens of my meta Ray Ban glasses. Can you hear it?

[Jacob Ward]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

I wouldn't recommend attempting to scrape off.

[Paris Martineau]

The radiant logo as it may damage the lens.

[Leo Laporte]

I may also use your interests, location and profile to provide more relevant responses. What?

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

There's your caveat. There's your caveat.

[Paris Martineau]

Maybe if you were asking a question in New Jersey, give you a different.

[Leo Laporte]

Because you asked me that. That I'm gonna track you now.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Every time you ask to remove a piece of advertising on your person, we're going to consume more of your data.

[Leo Laporte]

That was amazing. I'm so glad you could hear that. Holy cow.

[Paris Martineau]

It was also just the dismissiveness with which the voice said, incidentally, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Also don't try it. I wouldn't recommend it now.

[Benito]

I follow you around. So there.

[Leo Laporte]

And now, by the way, you've just given me permission. And it didn't say like, is it okay or anything. It just said, now I'm following you everywhere you go. Just so you know.

[Paris Martineau]

No, you can't take it off your glasses. And I'm in your home right now and coming upstairs.

[Leo Laporte]

And just because you asked that, you will be punished. I got my eyes on you.

[Benito]

You can actually just get actual graded lenses and put them in that don't have the Ray Ban logo on them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, actually I could, could go to my optometrist. These don't really fit my head. I have such a wide head. I need me too.

[Paris Martineau]

I have a wide head.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have a big head.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we all have big. We're all big heads.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Here we are.

[Paris Martineau]

We're all big headed people in more ways than one. I, you know, I've got to make sure I get the large hats because otherwise they don't fit my head.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's very hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep, I'm eight and a half, which.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think we have a scientific discovery here. Podcasters have big heads.

[Paris Martineau]

Podcasters have big heads. I think that was well known already.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, when I, when I first thought about Leo.

[Paris Martineau]

I think you keep that on.

[Leo Laporte]

And we were still, we were still doing our podcasts. You know, it was early enough that people were still using ipods and the early ipods had a little screen and they said, you know, all our video should be big head video. Like not normal shots like this, but everybody should fill the screen so that we would look normal on the little tiny ipod screen. Fortunately, I never implemented the big head video concept. I could have Been rich. I tell you, rich people will be.

[Paris Martineau]

Throwing money to see a 3 inch by 3 inch head on their tiny phone screen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm really interested.

[Leo Laporte]

So many. 90 and 91.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, so it's Melanie Mitchell.

[Leo Laporte]

Who's Melanie Mitchell?

[Jeff Jarvis]

She's the one who's at Signal.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. And she's got an AI guide for thinking humans.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So. So. So here's the. And the Wall Street Journal wrote about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this is the story that Paris is reading about how AIs don't think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They'Re a bag of heuristics. Right. So what it comes down to is they've gotten little clues. Nobody knows how these things work because they're so complex. And what they've gotten down to is that it's not thinking. We know that. But it's a bag of heuristic. It's a bag of rules. It's a whole mess of rules. It's like my wife telling me how to load the dishwasher.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but that's kind of my response to that is that's all we are too.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Makes you think we're not a bag of heuristics.

[Benito]

A different set of heuristics.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, well, but that's the goal of these AI training is to make it such a big bag of heuristics. It's even better than we are exactly. At predicting what's going to happen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's the book that I've quoted often on the show How History Gets Things Wrong, Our Addiction to Stories by Alex Rosenberg. And yeah, we basically have little videotapes in our head, and when we come across a situation, we play whatever videotapes seem to be relevant and say, I'll go back way now.

[Leo Laporte]

She quotes Yan Lun, who I know you think very highly of. In fact, you interviewed him, didn't you?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, we did.

[Leo Laporte]

On Inside. AI Lacun, along with philosopher Jacob Browning, asserts a system trained on language alone will never approximate human intelligence, even if trained till now. Until the heat death of the universe.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So this is where the we get to the argument about real world models.

[Leo Laporte]

Stop you. You've done as. We've done as much as you can at this point with text. Now we got to get robots out in the world.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do the eggs crack when they fall off the table? Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It certainly would improve their intelligence. You know, I mean, we are building bigger and bigger models with now hundreds of billions.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Your glasses right there. You're helping out better right now.

[Leo Laporte]

I am apparently exactly where I am. And it can see everything I see isn't it funny that Mark was wearing the meta glasses but not recording the video with them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was thinking that too. He should have stood before a mirror and done it.

[Leo Laporte]

He was apparently using his phone and talking to meta glasses.

[Paris Martineau]

Plus they had obviously had a clear parasocial gaze.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Everybody had no. No lunch outside today. Nobody out lunch. Mark's doing a video.

[Leo Laporte]

What is the parasocial gaze? I thought it was named after you, Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

That is true. I mean, all things that kind of sound like Paris are named after me. No, like a parasocial relationship is the relationship, much like you, dear listener, might have formed in your head with us. It is a one sided social relationship that consumers of content form with the content creators. And in some ways I describe the parasocial gaze as the. The way that influencers or content creators kind of look at their camera in order to connect with an audience that isn't there when they're recording it, but will be there when the content's being consumed. So in some ways he had to do the selfie video because if he was recording with the glasses, you wouldn't get the parasocial gaze of Mark Zuckerberg looking at you.

[Leo Laporte]

The audience chance he has to look back at you. Which is why I'm wearing my meta glasses right now. Because I'm looking at you. Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

And Mark Zuckerberg is looking at you too.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute, really? Apparently we've known that all along. He's watching me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let me correct myself. Melanie Mitchell is not. She is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, okay. Now, the Santa Fe Institute. Tell me more about that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know. I wondered that.

[Leo Laporte]

It sounds a little bit like.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Earhart Nest.

[Benito]

Yeah, no, Santa Fe Institute does real science. They do real science.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, they're good.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a real science. She studies AI for them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not hippie dippy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, she's somebody Sahara. We should have her on the show.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, we should.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Book them Dano. Book em Benito. That's good. I like. That's my new catchphrase. Book em bonito. She talks about Othello, which is an early example of evidence for emergent world models that the AIs, after being given enough information, start to actually have a model for the world. So Othello is pretty simple. You know, that's the one where you take turns. It's kind of like a simple go, right? It's like. What's that? You drop the. Anyway, so they. You know where you drop the six center. Connect four. Thank you. The Authors trained a transformer network. They called it Othello GPT with all the legal moves. And it. It inputted a legal move, then would output a legal next legal move in the sequence, which, by the way, I could do that. Okay, that's easy. But they did it not programmatically, but by training. Then they used an Othello game simulator to generate 20 million different game sequences. They trained on that. Othello is simple enough that you probably could with 20 million, I imagine, have all the possibilities. I don't know. After training on 20 million sequences, Othello GPT was nearly perfect on predicting a token representing the legal move, given the sequence of previous moves. But the question is, what did the network actually learn?

[Jeff Jarvis]

So this was coined if you go down under the headline World Models versus Bag of Heuristics by a group of student researchers who wrote a blog post in 2024 saying that they had done this. And then they said, though we cannot rule out that it also learns a single succinct algorithm in addition to these rules. Our best guess is that Othello GPT's learned algorithm is just a bag of independent heuristics.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, but we don't know because it's kind of a black.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They tried to find. They found a location, kind of a memory location where that seemed to happen.

[Leo Laporte]

My. My higher, more meta question is, does it matter?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, that again. Yeah, we.

[Jacob Ward]

We want to know how it works.

[Leo Laporte]

Everything matters and nothing nihilism. This is my philosophy in the life. Everything matters and nothing matters. But in the sense of is it. Is a. AI going to generate something of use? Does it matter how it does it? Is the question in terms of how.

[Jeff Jarvis]

To engineer it, in terms how to build. If you want to try.

[Leo Laporte]

We kind of know how to engineer these transformers. You want to build guardrail doing inside.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You want to really build guardrail rails. It would help to know how it operates, I suspect, if you want to tune it to try to figure out.

[Leo Laporte]

If you want to build a simulcrum that produces human like thought, does it matter?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't think we need human like thought.

[Paris Martineau]

I think we've got enough human like thought.

[Benito]

There's a lot of that.

[Leo Laporte]

Get more. More than we need. Yeah. Stop thinking less human. Human thought. Okay. You know, this is. These are the deep philosophical questions you're watching that we pursue here on Intelligent Machines with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. We're glad you're here. We invite you if you like the show to come back. We do the show live on eight different platforms for our club members. Club Twit, Discord. Count for me, will you? Paris has an unusual number of fingers. Is she real?

[Paris Martineau]

It's true.

[Leo Laporte]

We got your. We got your Discord. We got your YouTube. You got your twitch, you got your tick tock, your ex, your Facebook, your LinkedIn and your kick.

[Paris Martineau]

I believe that's eight.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it eight? Okay. You were. I was worried that I missed one. You can watch us live every Wednesday afternoon from 2 to 5pm Pacific, 5 to 8pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. And if you're in the club, of course you can chat with us. Actually you could chat on all those platforms. But we like to chat with the Discord especially because those are our club members, the 7,000 people. Not everybody joins the club does the discord. But the 7,000 club members who are in the Discord, we love it. Makes it a fun place to hang. That's all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It does indeed. Look, show the show the latest image in the Discord. Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

They're so. They're so creative. They're so creative in there. Oh, look at that. Wouldn't you like to join this rock and roll?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm sorry, I was going up. Yeah, there's. If you go up, it's you and Mars Leo with the space helmet on.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A little more. A little more.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Oh, that's the Big head. Oh, this is the big Head video that we did with Father Robert. It's an experiment back in the day when we wanted to have those big heads. We thought that would be kind of a cool.

[Paris Martineau]

This is upsetting. Viscerally. It's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's amazing what you can do.

[Benito]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There you are. That's.

[Paris Martineau]

That's upsetting too.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That is.

[Leo Laporte]

Welcome to Mars, ladies and gentlemen. We invite you to join us in the club. Can't promise you'll make it to Mars, but I can promise you'll have a good time ad free.

[Paris Martineau]

I can promise you'll make it to Mars if you join the club. If you have a free trip to Mars.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice. 7 bucks a month to get a free trip to Mars. $84 a year ad free versions of all the shows, access to the Discord, special programming. We're going to do the photo show on Friday. Jeff, Paris and I will be doing Google IO soon. We're going to cover wwdc.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is it in your calendar?

[Paris Martineau]

When is that?

[Leo Laporte]

I'll give you the date. Just swallow another gummy.

[Paris Martineau]

Listen, they'll be up till tomorrow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Don't do that to her.

[Leo Laporte]

And we will Be doing Google I o the 20th. May 20th. Not the 21st.

[Paris Martineau]

May 20th. All right, 20th.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jason told me that there's going to.

[Leo Laporte]

Be no, there's an Android event the week before.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're doing it before they've moved Android to the kiddie table.

[Leo Laporte]

So I will let Jason and the gang at Android Faithful who do that show all about Android. Cover that one. They can have that one. But we'll do the Google I O May 20, 10am Paris. Jeff and I, we're going to cover Microsoft's guilt build keynote the day before. We've got WWC coming up. All this now is club only. Only because we got so many takedown notices from Apple. We just decided, you know, why fight it? We're going to do it in the club for club members. It's one more reason to join.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did anybody other than Apple, any of the other tech companies?

[Leo Laporte]

No, believe it or not, it was only Apple, of course, but they did it on YouTube and then they started doing it on Twitch and I don't want to get banned from either platform. So we're going to do it all in the club.

[Jeff Jarvis]

See Apple, we can't have nice things because of you.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is a nice thing. Gets people to join the club. 7.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Very nice thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Twit TV. Thanks, Apple. Maybe we'll do the Android thing too. Actually, we should do a simulcast with Android Faithful. That'd be kind of fun. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There are research firms, there are consulting firms, and then there's Forrester. Forrester combines research based insights with hands on guidance that's focused on your needs and goals. Whether you're looking to align your organization.

[Leo Laporte]

Or transform your business through generative AI, Forrester is on your side. And by your side, meet Today's Forrester and Forester.com. all right. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap it up? Well, I know there's always too much stuff to get it all in.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Universities have a computer science problem. Line 133.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they having trouble? Because you know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, my friend Ian Big Ghost was really smart.

[Leo Laporte]

Is he a friend of yours? Because I follow him. I like it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He's. Well, he's the one who introduced me me to I I. He's the editor of the series Object Lessons. Oh, so he's one of the two editors. And so he then introduced Peter Bloomsbury and that's how I got my last two books published and my next one published.

[Leo Laporte]

So nice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I think the friendship for you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I haven't helped you like that. The case for Speak French.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, the second line of this. This article has a crazy stat, which is that 42% of graduates from MIT last year majored in computer science. Nearly half.

[Leo Laporte]

That's MIT. I mean, yeah, but that's still a lot of technology.

[Paris Martineau]

I know, but that's still a lot. In one, I just hit myself in the eye with a microphone. That's a surprise.

[Leo Laporte]

I look, so what? What he's saying. Why is that a problem? Too many of them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He had a choice when he went in. He had a choice of taking computer science and engineering or taking computer science in arts and sciences. And a lot of students chose to take it in engineering because they didn't have to learn French. But he switched. He did it in arts and sciences, then he shifted out anyway and went to philosophy.

[Leo Laporte]

It's another argument for the liberal education.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Exactly, Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

So I do not have any technology. In fact, the only thing that helped me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There wasn't any technology.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there was.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, you would have learned how to smack two rocks together or something.

[Leo Laporte]

The thing that helped me the most was I took courses in mathematic logic, which was very helpful. But, no, I didn't take any computer science courses. And most of the people in my generation didn't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris, are you laughing at the. At the.

[Leo Laporte]

She's laughing at me.

[Paris Martineau]

No, I'm laughing at the idea of a course being called Make a Wheel, which is a throwing joke.

[Leo Laporte]

Make a wheel. In this course today, we're gonna make fire the most important invention of humankind, a round object we like to call the wheel.

[Paris Martineau]

Everybody's furiously taking notes.

[Leo Laporte]

Remember the diagonal?

[Paris Martineau]

It's gotta be round, but it can't be too round.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is this gonna be on the final?

[Leo Laporte]

If you want the wheel to roll, it's very important. Important that the radius at every point be the same length.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Otherwise, Wheel 101.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm surprised you remember this much from Wheel 101.

[Leo Laporte]

It was one of the most important courses. I took that right next to 5. Professor Flitzer, 101. How to use it, how to strike it, how to use it, how to blow it out. It's very important. Very important.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Where were we before I so interrupted ourselves? Oh, it's computer science problems. So, yeah, so I'm working on. I'm part of the steering committee for a new program at Stony Brook called Technology AI and Society. And the aim is to try to bring everyone in from other disciplines. And we need that. Because geeks have been in charge. It's time to demote the geeks.

[Leo Laporte]

I disagree wholeheartedly.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But okay, fine, it's time to promote some other people.

[Leo Laporte]

You should learn French.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm not against it, says Mr. Lepore.

[Paris Martineau]

My, my take has always been that I think that while I understand the practical reality of people going to college and majoring in something that will have immediate. It will immediately translate to job potential in America, that's certainly something that is incredibly important. Important given the cost of college. I do think that in an ideal world, college education should be less about preparing you to fulfill a specific job function, more about teaching you how to think and having a robust humanity. Centric education is often critical in developing critical thinking skills and just becoming a more round, well rounded person. And I would love a world where we could go back to that. But the current cost of college education does not make that viable for most people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What Ian argues in here is that you might be better off creating a college of computing outside of a college of engineering so that you're motivated to have a differently rounded curriculum. Which I think is an interesting idea. That computing is so important in world now it's kind of surprising we don't have that we do in some school.

[Paris Martineau]

System is something that there would be. They'd have expertise at. At wheel 101.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes. So we, we educate well rounded students.

[Leo Laporte]

We're 101.

[Paris Martineau]

We've got a steering committee that drives this car all the way down the road.

[Leo Laporte]

We do not recommend using your feet to accelerate the vehicle. Keep your hands and feet inside all the time and use a yak like modern guides.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Think first. How would you stop this thing before you started?

[Leo Laporte]

Very important. Think about how you're gonna stop.

[Paris Martineau]

You shouldn't start out by saying yappa dappa doo and going down the hill. That's advanced wheeling. That's in wheeling and dealing. 3.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Gravity is a 100 2.

[Leo Laporte]

In all seriousness, now I'm a little worried about south by Southwest. It was a very successful conference just a few weeks ago. But it is owned. I didn't realize this by Penske Media.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because they've had to rescue it during the pandemic.

[Leo Laporte]

They saved it, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

They did save it. And Hugh Forest was the reason I didn't go to South Bay. I stopped going to south by Southwest.

[Leo Laporte]

So, okay, so he is now out. It was fired, apparently. Why don't. Why didn't you like Hugh Forest?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was going there once to speak and I mentioned on the socials, whatever there was at the time that I was going to go speak somewhere else. And he became you're not allowed to speak anywhere else. When you're speaking up by Southwest, you can't do that. I thought. And I tried to just kind of banter back. And he was just difficult. And I just said, I don't need you. And then once you stopped going, Leo, there was no reason to go.

[Leo Laporte]

I had a lot of fun the couple of times I went. We know many people go every year, and many people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's mainly Germans and marketers now. Germans. Love it. Love it.

[Leo Laporte]

The name may be familiar because they, in fact were the big racing family that took the money that they made from their auto parts oil business and invested in media. They own the Rolling Stone, the Hollywood Reporter. They own the Golden Globes, recently acquired that they did save south by in 2021, when Covid was about to kill it, bought 50% of the company at the time. They took control of the festival two years ago by buying another 1%. And they laid off not only the president of south by Southwest, Hugh Forrest, by the way, saying that he voluntarily.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Left, but he disagrees.

[Leo Laporte]

He says, no, it's not my decision. I put my heart and soul into this event for more than 35 years and I was looking forward to leading several more editions. Ten other people left, including its longtime head of communications and the chief technology officer. There are still 150 festival employees. Wow. Yeah. I have Penske gets, for me, gets some a pass somewhat because they saved it. It wouldn't be there at all if they had invested. But I'm a little nervous about the reorg because it is one of those. It's one of those fragile things, I think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Does Penske outright own Vox now? They listed on their.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Maybe.

[Paris Martineau]

Wait. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wouldn't be surprised.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, yeah. Penske, I believe, is part of. They invested. I'm forgetting the details. They invested, I believe like a hundred million in Vox recently.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, there is of course, quite a consolidation in the media business. We have a little small town newspaper which is now owned by Hearst.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's better than other choices?

[Paris Martineau]

Donut, as they say, used to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Used to be owned by the New York Times and then was bought by a local family for a few years. But Hearst has just recently bought it along with the. The big city newspaper up there in Santa Rosa.

[Paris Martineau]

To clarify my earlier point, yes, Penske did invest 100 million in Vox, effectively purchasing 20% of Vox.

[Leo Laporte]

So they don't have a controlling interest.

[Paris Martineau]

They have a controlling interest.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. That means VOX is worth half a billion dollars.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes, I mean Vox had. Which is a huge.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it was valuation that was.

[Paris Martineau]

A huge head haircut from its previous valuations.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They were worth knowing enough of a haircut. It's a head cut.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's a head cut. It's a head. They'll be taking that green ribbon to tie it back on.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazon has announced. I think this is brilliant. Car dealers are going to do it. They're going to put on the sticker price. And by the way.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh no, Leo, you're a little.

[Leo Laporte]

Cost you a little bit more. Amazon and announced. Well, let's get the whole story because Amazon announced going forward, tariff costs will be itemized out in the overall cost.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And the Wall Street Journal thinks it's a great idea, by the way.

[Leo Laporte]

I do think it's a great idea. The White House did not. They immediately said it was unpatriotic and I don't know. So what's the latest? Are they not going to do it now?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, so, so Bezos made excuses when Trump called him and said, no, no, no, that was one small little division that was thinking about it. They had decided, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not doing it.

[Paris Martineau]

And Bezos, to clarify, not the CEO.

[Leo Laporte]

Of M. Not Andy Jassy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right?

[Paris Martineau]

No, Andy Jassy is technically the CEO, but of course Bezos is one of the people that has.

[Leo Laporte]

We know who really runs. Runs the place. Yeah. Well, the President does have the Take It down act sitting on his table. The House voted 409 to 2 to pass the bill, the Senate 98 to 2. It sounds like on the surface, exactly like a perfectly reasonable thing. It's, in fact, it's the first time there's been any online safety legislation to pass that both houses. It would require social media companies to take down content flagged as non consensual, including AI generated sexual images. Social media companies will have 48 hours to do so. However, the EFF and many others, Tech dirt's been leading the charge on this, say that it really is just going to give the government a weapon against content. Trump actually even admitted this in his State of the Union address. He said, I'm going to use that bill for myself too, if you don't mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody. Well, now how can he use it to take down.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I mean, that is still to be said. From what I've heard from people on the Hill involved with this as well as, I mean, lobbying groups and lobbyists representing large, medium and small tech firms. It does seem like this bill at least was conceived of and by with kind of the Input of not just the giant tech companies. It does seem like there was a lot of work with groups representing medium sized tech companies to make sure the bill is worded in a way that will allow smaller tech companies to comply with it in a way. But I do think that as you said, there is a pressing concern with regards to how this new power is going to be used in terms of censorship. When we see a similar thing with the weaponization of DMCA takedowns of some people have figured out ways to kind of weaponize that system in order to take down content they don't have a legal right to take down because you.

[Leo Laporte]

Don'T have a lot of time. For instance, I've been really worried about this with our Mastodon instance. It means I have 48 hours if somebody complains to take it down. Not enough time to verify whether the complaint is legit.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And what, on what bases can someone complain?

[Leo Laporte]

Any basis that, well, I mean they have to say it's supposed to be, well, specifically porn or something, right?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's only if it is non consensual graphic, intimate image.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, you don't want any involving intimate images at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I take, as soon as I see them, I, I ban people, kick them out. So I do that anyway. We'll see. The problem is the 48 hours. There's also one more problem. End to end encryption. They are not exempt from the bill. So any company like Apple that provides end to end encryption is still responsible for anything that's in the encrypted data. And the EFF has warned how can such services comply with the takedown requests mandated in this bill. Platforms may respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content, turning private conversations into surveilled spaces. Something law enforcement in this country and all over the world has wanted all along. And maybe that's one of the reasons that's getting so much backing. I mean, if you just read the face of it and you don't consider the challenge of it, you could say, well, this is a good thing. We're finally a big step towards protecting people from non consensual imagery. But we shall see. We shall see. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, one of two Republican members who voted against the bill, said he couldn't support it because I feel this is a slippery slope ripe for abuse with unintended consequences. Right, right. Anyway, we'll watch. It will almost certainly be signed into law in the next few hours.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Mike's head is going to explode.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Mike's really become the poster boy for free news.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Kathy on this weekend, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Kathy Gallison. Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Listen to it all. But did she.

[Leo Laporte]

No, we didn't, we didn't talk, actually. We did not get to the take it down act. I wish we had. It hadn't passed yet and I thought, there's no way. And I was wrong. Well, anything else before we move to your picks of the week, I'm curious.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Have you looked at the slate?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I asked Lisa because Lisa's been saying for a long time that she wants to buy a pickup truck, but she doesn't want one of the big, giant, giant ginormous penis mobiles.

[Paris Martineau]

What is the slate? Are we talking about that car that's pedal. Pedal based?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. It's got wheels, they're round. No, she's, she wants a small, like they used to make little small Japanese trucks. Well, there's a company, and it turns out it's funded by Jeff Bezos, primarily called Slate Auto, that is planning to offer an EV truck for 27 thou. After the rebate, it'd be about 2, 20,000 dollars. But it doesn't even come with a radio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Everything's an add on it.

[Leo Laporte]

It does come very kindly. It comes with a holder for your phone, but it doesn't have speakers.

[Paris Martineau]

Does it have speakers?

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't have speakers, so you'll have to bring a phone and speakers. But, but, but like I said, it already has the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In the old days, Paris, in the old days, we used to go in and we didn't buy the car off a lot. We went in and said, we want this and that, not that and this and that and all these choices. And then it was made for us in Detroit and then it would arrive. That's the way we used to.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but it was never as bare bones as this. It doesn't have a paint job. It's made of plastic, by the way, like the old Saturn.

[Paris Martineau]

How does that work in terms of crash safety?

[Leo Laporte]

They say crash test is absolutely safe. You can buy. This is the suv. Add on that, you can add on to it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You add on chairs and you can.

[Leo Laporte]

It's completely customizable. I asked, I said, lisa, this is what you were looking for, which is a small, inexpensive pickup truck. To which she said, I'll wait till their third version before I buy it, which is probably smart.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're still around. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Refreshingly uncluttered. They say, here's the, here's the dashboard. It is, it's refreshing. But you know what? It's a car. And Actually, as somebody who drives electric vehicles, my first electric vehicle, which was a Tesla Model X, I kind of felt like this is really just a golf cart with a big computer on it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

EVs really aren't that sophisticated. In fact, that's the other advantage of this very low maintenance. You know, electric engines are very simple. They don't. They don't really have the same problems that gas engines do. You still have to charge at home. Here's the size comparison. So there's a slate with a overlay of the Silverado Ford Maverick. This is the one Lisa wants, like an old 1985 Toyota.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, that's cute.

[Leo Laporte]

SR5. It's the same. It's even.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's the range?

[Paris Martineau]

Okay. I will also say I don't think you can put speakers in the car. It is designed.

[Leo Laporte]

No, you bring a Bluetooth speaker.

[Paris Martineau]

You just always have a Bluetooth. Bluetooth speaker and phone in there, which, I mean, I guess is a screen. You can add a. I don't think so.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of the things I see.

[Benito]

This thing is a totally modular platform.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's what it is.

[Benito]

I build stuff for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and they say, too, it won't be huge range. It'll be under 200 miles. We have to see the actual range information. But they'll also offer wraps. So if you want color, you can, you can wrap it with color.

[Benito]

Wait, if it's plastic, can it take to, like, any kind of paint then, like, can you just paint yourself?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it would be pretty easy. They save a lot of money.

[Jeff Jarvis]

One of the stories I said that I was gonna. I wanted to hire a graffiti artist to paint my car so that my car was unique.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, why not? You can have any color you want. Like, here's the color wheel. You can make it whatever color. Oh, look, see, that's a two tone. Oh, I like that. Ooh. Ooh. Anyway, I'm building my own. I'm doing it all myself, man. Do I want a decal? Do I want exterior wheels and tires?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Does it have lists of internal options?

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see. Interior.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's a nice.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go. There you go. We can have it all kinds.

[Paris Martineau]

Interior, decal set.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, so it's still just design?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it just seems like it's mostly personalization.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. You know, at that price, I'm. I'm kind of tempted. My lease for my existing EV runs out in a. In a couple of years. I might end up driving this little sucker around I could see it tootling around, toodling around.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

You know, I. Since I've been back here in Florida, I was talking to my parents, and I did get a kind of interesting insight into the average potential electric vehicle consumer. My parents have always been, I don't know, no reason I'd get an electric vehicle. My mom's car was in the shop for a while and they, as a replacement, gave her a brand new electric BMW that she had to drive. And I was like, oh, isn't it great? Isn't electric vehicle fun? She's like, no, it's awful. No one at the BMW dealership could teach me how to plug it in. I watch hours of YouTube videos, but all of them assume that you know how to plug it in to begin with. And she's like. And I couldn't figure it. I mean, my mom's not the most technically savvy person, but it was an interesting conundrum I had.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a legitimate point.

[Paris Martineau]

It is. There is a learning curve to use electric vehicles for the average person.

[Leo Laporte]

Early on in the electric vehicle world, when you went to a regular car dealer and bought their electric vehicle, they knew nothing about it. I had a Ford Mustang Mach E, they knew nothing about it. But that has changed over time. Now, the dealership, especially given that you're in.

[Paris Martineau]

In a city where, yeah, people are probably buying vehicles. Yeah. California, maybe not in Florida, but I.

[Leo Laporte]

Have a VMware electric BMW. I like it quite a bit. It's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I went, I went to test drive a Volvo electric, and this is how new I am to it. They said, you want the one pedal or two pedal? I said, what?

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Heard that.

[Leo Laporte]

You always get two pedals, by the way, don't be fooled. But the one pedal drive. So you got a brake pedal, accelerator, but because it's just like a golf cart, when you take your foot off the accelerator. This is called one pedal driving. It's. It breaks, it slows down because it's doing regenerative braking and charging the battery.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I said the same thing. Paris. Paris's eyes crossed.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm just like, I can't imagine you.

[Leo Laporte]

Get very used to it very quickly. I prefer one pedal driving, to be honest. That's all the Teslas are, one pedal. You still have a brake. It's not like they get rid of the brake, but you.

[Paris Martineau]

Where's the brake? If there's only one pedal, there's still.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A use 1, 2 pedals.

[Leo Laporte]

Use 1 pedal pedal. But by the way, you get used to it. I rarely use My brake. Because you use. You lift off as you approach the stop sign and you know exactly how long it's going to go before it stops. It's great. And you. And you're adding to your battery every time you do that.

[Benito]

I still have three pedals and I use all three.

[Leo Laporte]

You have a clutch. You're like an old school man. Well, no, I far prefer it. In fact, most of the time when people drive electric vehicle, they go, oh, this is great, great.

[Paris Martineau]

Hey, if you're out there and you have four pedals, six pedals, get in the comments. I want to see who's got the most pedals.

[Leo Laporte]

I think three is the most you can get.

[Paris Martineau]

Hey, you never know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, my father learned on a double clutch.

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

You still have one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You had one clutch, but you had to put it in before you shifted and then after you shifted both.

[Leo Laporte]

They do that with trucks sometimes. And my old VW had a little lever to give you the reserve tank because it didn't have a gas gauge. So you just drove it till it ran out of gas, and then you'd flip the lever, you'd get an extra half gallon or whatever it was, a small amount, just enough to get.

[Paris Martineau]

You drove until you ran out of gas.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You had no idea. And there was no trip odometer, so you couldn't do that.

[Leo Laporte]

You had no idea. You just drive and start to go. Then you'd flip the reserve tank and then you go, you know, I got a little while, but I gotta get to a gas station.

[Paris Martineau]

How insane is it that you've gone from a world, world where you just drove, you ran out of gas, to a world where you got AI on every part of you?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's amazing.

[Paris Martineau]

Now I understand why you're an accelerationist. You're like, I can't believe any of this is happening.

[Leo Laporte]

You know why?

[Jeff Jarvis]

One day we had the wheel and then look what we had.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm an accelerationist because I'm going to be dead soon and I just want to see how far we can get before I die.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, you sound like. So I. I'm almost finished with. And. And I think Benito is trying to get this author who I recommended, Adam Becker. More everything Forever. It's great. It is superb. And he talks about all of the test grail folks and they just want to stay alive. It's Kurzweil. They want to stay alive long enough to stay alive forever. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the shtick I should mention in Jacob Ward's book. At the very beginning, he, in Just a few pages demolishes the notion that we will ever leave this planet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We've got to make this book too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. City on Mars. Another good book that does the same thing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes it does.

[Leo Laporte]

It is not viable. No, it would take.

[Paris Martineau]

Unless you subscribe to Club Twit. Then you're going. You're going to Mars.

[Leo Laporte]

We're gonna try. You're gonna have some new way of.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We're shipping you all.

[Paris Martineau]

We're not telling you how you might. It might end up up that after you die, I collect some of your ashes and I shoot them off towards Mars. But you're still going club.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think I'll get to Mars in my lifetime. I would go. If they offered me even a one way trip, I would go, but it would be.

[Paris Martineau]

You would die on Mars. I wouldn't go to die.

[Leo Laporte]

The problem is you're more likely to die on the way to Mars. It's 400 days. No human has spent that much time in space. You are exposed to cosmic rays, you got no gravity. It's a. It's a nightmare getting there.

[Benito]

You'll just be in really bad shape.

[Leo Laporte]

Barely.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm curious, Jeff and Benito, if you're offered a one way ticket to Mars, you going?

[Benito]

Absolutely not. No way. That's crazy.

[Paris Martineau]

Me neither.

[Benito]

If there's colonies already, it's like that's.

[Leo Laporte]

You're not my.

[Paris Martineau]

There's no Internet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I've fantasized about it.

[Leo Laporte]

I'd go because I are not going forever. We're going to be gone soon. We want to do something interesting on the way out.

[Benito]

I would only do it if it worked like it worked in the movies. But it's not going to work that way. You know it's not going to work.

[Leo Laporte]

I know it's not going to be like that. It's going to be.

[Paris Martineau]

I think I would even do it if it worked the way it did, Star wars style.

[Benito]

Like I could lift off and get onto Mars. Then sure, I'll go to Mars. But if that's.

[Leo Laporte]

There's nothing.

[Paris Martineau]

What am I going to do on Mars? I'll be bored.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because you'll have to be underground, no.

[Paris Martineau]

One to talk to.

[Jacob Ward]

You know Paris.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, no. You will love it. You know why? Because you have to live in a tunnel.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I thought you were going to say because you have to live on neuro gummies.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean that's. That's also probably true. Those would be two compelling points. Points to move to Mars. But I think that's it.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, you're watching the Incredible Intelligent Machines with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. Our picks of the week coming up next. Shall we start our picks of the week with you, Ms. Martineau?

[Paris Martineau]

I have a listener generated pick of the week. Oh, good.

[Leo Laporte]

Always welcome to do that.

[Paris Martineau]

Sent me this. Pete Cook on Twitter at Blind Pete sent me this archive.org link that he said, I knew you'd love. And he was right. It's a collection of cassettes posted by Mark Davis that says. Okay, I have to admit this is a strange collection. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I worked for Kmart behind the service desk. And the store played specific pre recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you'd call it elevator music. Anyway, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period. And this video shows you my extensive odd collection. So you've got canned elevator music with instrumental rendition of songs, some advertisements, weird announcements.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Does it have the flashy blue light special announcement? I want that.

[Benito]

I want attention Kmart shoppers. We need attention Kmart shoppers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a blue light special. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Let's see. Where would it be?

[Leo Laporte]

Here?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Kresge. That's different.

[Jacob Ward]

Can make the big difference whether a.

[Leo Laporte]

Briggs and Stratton lasts four years.

[Paris Martineau]

Ah, love it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Four minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a long.

[Paris Martineau]

That was a long one.

[Leo Laporte]

Long delay.

[Benito]

Oh, it's a film strip. It's a film strip with a tape.

[Leo Laporte]

SS and how to complete the sale. So I guess the trainer is supposed to talk during this long drumroll.

[Paris Martineau]

There are some good ones of just general music too down here. And I don't know, I just found it really fun. There's a lot of fun stuff to listen to this. I would really like to go find.

[Leo Laporte]

The blue light special.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I would.

[Paris Martineau]

What is the blue light special?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because they would regularly do that and you'd have to. They would say, not right now. In haberdashery. Yeah, Flashing shoppers.

[Benito]

Like that's how sales were before the Internet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. And they had a flashing blue light. There was like a run over to the blue light.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Because it was on the sale. Or was it in the. What was the whole.

[Paris Martineau]

There's a physical blue light in the.

[Benito]

Store in the K. Yeah, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, we gotta. Surely there's video flash come up. We gotta find this for Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

There's gotta be on. I just searched blue light in here.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, flashing blue light is important.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, flashing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Flashing blue light special.

[Leo Laporte]

Here you go.

[Paris Martineau]

No sound.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Attention Kmart shoppers. Welcome and thank you for shopping with us here at Kmart in Sweetwater. Bring fun and excitement to your shopping experience, as well as thousands of holiday.

[Leo Laporte]

Savings throughout our store.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And right now, just in time, talking.

[Leo Laporte]

To the bottom of a telephone special.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen.

[Paris Martineau]

Love that.

[Leo Laporte]

He's good. I like him.

[Paris Martineau]

That's great.

[Leo Laporte]

This is on archive.org, another reason to love archive.org attention called attention Kmart shoppers Mark Davis and others. Mark started it, but There are now 264 cassettes on there, including Kresge training.

[Paris Martineau]

And there are just really interesting descriptions on a lot of these tapes too, about how they digitized it, you know, the strange conditions they found, the reel to reel decks and how they were straightened out. It's just a real treasure trove of stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris, did you ever have a job where you had to watch training videos before you took the floor?

[Paris Martineau]

I think when I worked as a hostess at Cracker Barrel, I did.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Cracker Barrel would have had them. Hey, I worked at McDonald's. And you had to go down in the basement and watch these videos like this one. You're in show business.

[Paris Martineau]

What is strange? It's not playing the same.

[Leo Laporte]

It's another slide.

[Paris Martineau]

It's another. Oh, it's a slide strip. Oh my God.

[Leo Laporte]

Or there's somebody.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, someone doing it.

[Leo Laporte]

It.

[Paris Martineau]

That's fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Beauty, glamour, excitement, TV spectaculars, Hollywood premieres.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is part of your work at Kresge.

[Leo Laporte]

When you take care of a section.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In a Kresge store, you're in show business.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at it this way. I always wanted to be in show business.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Show business is knowing how to make a good appearance. It's knowing how to get attention.

[Leo Laporte]

It's knowing how to give the customers what they want.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's your business too.

[Leo Laporte]

I love this matter of making a good for instance, I could probably have done that had I been born in an earlier era. Mr. Jeff Jarvis, do you have a. I have.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have two. Two quick things. One is that according to Axios, we are far from alone now content creators, all the people who were doing prompt engineering there are all now content creators. The hugely fast growing air quotes job category the number of people full time employment jobs as digital creators in the US jumped from 200,000 in 2020 to 1.5 million in 2024.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And I love this. Axios why it matters creators are now the largest and fastest growing segment of the 28.4 Internet dependent jobs in the.

[Leo Laporte]

U.S. i guess I'm an independent. I guess I am. Come to think of it, I Without the Internet, I would have to go to Kresge and dance creator.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Media revenue is growing five times the rate of traditional media sector. Traditional media, however, is falling so much that you're barely keeping your nose about water. But that's another matter. All right, so that's one. The other one is for Paris, because this. I think we should make it a regular segment is Leo and Jeff explained the past to Paris and the good old days. In the old days. This is rabbit ears.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris, do you know what rabbit ears are?

[Paris Martineau]

They're the ears on a rabbit.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. You're not wrong.

[Paris Martineau]

But there's something a name for someone going like this behind your head.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, watch this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's a technology video. It requires explanation.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, those. Yeah, I know those. The antennas.

[Leo Laporte]

Those are the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Listen, you turn the sound on, go through the middle.

[Paris Martineau]

In between.

[Leo Laporte]

The idea is the signal goes right through the. Through the middle of the rabbit ears. And the rabbit ears grab it right out of the sky. No, that's not true.

[Paris Martineau]

But do you have it full length or not? Whether the things are pulled right up?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, as it turns out, the length. The length does have make a difference. It has a function.

[Paris Martineau]

Length doesn't matter. You heard it your first.

[Leo Laporte]

But I wouldn't worry about it. Manufacturer. Figure that all out for you.

[Jacob Ward]

Shorter and longer.

[Leo Laporte]

Experimental.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Shorter and longer.

[Leo Laporte]

Tuning your tv. So just fiddle around and try.

[Paris Martineau]

Just fiddle around with the same length for two arms?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, technically, yes, sir. Theoretically, yes. I think this guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

[Jacob Ward]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

But for openers, when you're just getting started, try turning it so that it's aimed this way.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Not all sets though, have movable rabbit chairs.

[Leo Laporte]

Regrettably, some sets. Oh, that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jaw.

[Leo Laporte]

Sets have movable rabbit ears. That's when you go to JC Kresge's for your rabbit ear selection.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's funny that you say that because I just saw somewhere a picture of rabbit ears for sale in the store. But I don't remember digital anymore.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Digital tv.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, but it was like in Mexico or somewhere.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo is hurt because you're from that part.

[Benito]

You can still get tv.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you still buy rabbit ears?

[Benito]

You can still do that, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I thought analog TV's gone. No, it's gone. There was a whole thing digital.

[Benito]

But you can get a digital.

[Leo Laporte]

It's still a signal.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It doesn't look like rabbit ears.

[Benito]

No, no, it's like a little. It's like a little dish now.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you could buy rabbit ears, but you should Shouldn't. Yes, you should buy a. A yagi or something more appropriate.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So, Leo, is that. Is that a posh Boston accent? That's not a British accent.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it the accent I'm using?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, the. Hers. The woman in that video.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, hers. It's the same thing. It's a phony mid Atlantic British accent that movie stars in the 20s used to use, even though they were from Poughkeepski. Everybody like this. Don't you remember? I remember everybody spoke the same. Yeah, no, that was. I think she was local. I don't know, maybe she was British. She might have been.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't think so. I think she might have been.

[Leo Laporte]

I think that that was. You know how that movie star accent was. Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Though, you know the speed test from ukla, You've probably used it from time.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yes, often.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, we're gonna Google speed test.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Cursing in my hotel room.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, they have a new speed test.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

It's called Orb or How is the Internet. Orb knows.

[Paris Martineau]

That'S. I'm always saying that. How is the Internet? Ask the orb.

[Leo Laporte]

Ask the orb. Well, let's feel the orb.

[Paris Martineau]

How's the Internet? And it says try again later.

[Leo Laporte]

The Internet is not good. So it's available everywhere. You can run it as an app on your phone, on your computer. And. And it's kind of like speed test. But for the longest time we've known this. We don't just test people's speed. That's actually not the most important thing. Jitter and other latency and other factors really can impact how your FaceTime calls are your zoom calls, that kind of thing. So I do in fact think this is probably a good thing to get. It's free right now. They hope to make money by question is.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. How do they hope to make money? And if they sell the background, aren't they selling your Internet that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, they white label it to Comcast and other people. That's the hope. Let's see what our. Let's do this. I've never done it before. What is our orb score? Anything less than 80 is something wrongs with your Internet. But it looks like my orb score is pretty darn.

[Paris Martineau]

You want a meteor.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Pretty good Deep.

[Leo Laporte]

Pretty good on the old Comcast business. That's my orb score. And you can see it's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

If I do it, I'm going to get angry that mine's not good. Enough of this.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know what? We're probably going to start telling people to install this and run it before they come on the show.

[Paris Martineau]

Because that's really funny that the website I looked up orb and the thing says introducing orb-orb blog. Love to introduce orb. And then you click a button that says git orb.

[Leo Laporte]

Get orb.

[Paris Martineau]

What's the URL orb orb.net. yeah, but then how are you testing it in brow? You can't test it without downloading.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't test it in a browser because the browser is lying to you. So we've known that also for a while. You need an app to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I need your help. Speaking of devices I need.

[Leo Laporte]

And by the way, you keep this running in the background.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't like it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you could turn it off after, run it for a night, you know, overnight or something. Just. Just get some idea.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I need hive mind technical help here.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

For the next book I want to use. I want to keep everything in PDFs so that I can use the tools and play with it and know how that works and not have thousands of pages of printouts which I have around me. And I need to be able to read the PDF on a tablet and mark it and sync it easily with Google Drive. The remarkable is one. I've also looked at this at the. At the.

[Leo Laporte]

You haven't used the Remarkable recently, though. You used it and had trouble thinking. I think they got a lot better at that, by the way.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So remarkable. The. The what's. What's the one for Android. The.

[Leo Laporte]

The Kobo.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Kobo.

[Leo Laporte]

I would not recommend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, I want to hear why in a second. The book. Well, and also the Android. The Amazon one. The.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the Amazon Scribe, which I have both or just a tablet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Talk to me. My goal is to be able to mark and annotate PDFs and when I close it, it goes back into Google Drive where it was. I don't have to do any moving around stuff. That's my goal.

[Leo Laporte]

I think an iPad is probably the right thing only because it does so much more.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, are you able to mark on Google Drive using an iPad though? Like with a style?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's a function of Google Drive and I don't know. Chrome.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I can Chrome, Canon, Chrome.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, then you'll be able to do it. It. I would think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, Chromebook.

[Paris Martineau]

Do you want to be able to write on it?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, but that's a feature that accept. That's a feature that Docs offers.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what you're saying?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I would imagine it would do it in Safari. Let me check. I think you're better off getting a full tablet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't forget I live like you eat at Google here.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, you can get a Google tablet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Benito]

So wouldn't an Android tablet just do that for you? Wouldn't that all work?

[Jeff Jarvis]

The problem is the Android. It's like my phone. I don't. My phone and I couldn't really do it. Whereas on my. On my Chromebook, I can use the Files app and it has this. Or I go to whatchamacallit, who has. Who controls the PDF Adobe, but they charge between 12 and $20 a month.

[Paris Martineau]

No, no, no, no, no, Dobie.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, maybe we can leave this. I don't know. Should we. Do you want to ask people to send you emails and help you out and.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Or just get an answer next week.

[Paris Martineau]

Let me know what you find out. Because this is something I've wanted to do, but for no particular reason. But I feel like it would be good. I've seen a lot of good stuff about the remarkable, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, people like the remarkable, actually. But it's not doing what you want to do, which is not. It's going to download it to the remarkable. You're going to mark it up and it's going to automatically sync it to drive, but it's not going to. If you want to leave it on drive, in essence, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's because that's what I can do now. So I'm trying to figure that out and I don't think Android is going to work. I think there's Chrome tablets now. The Chrome tablet that you've got with the. The.

[Leo Laporte]

I could try it right now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I got it right, the docking thing. But that's meant for home, for turning on the lights. It's not really meant for reading.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's. It's a real. It's a full size.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is that Chrome?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And yeah, there's Chrome. Yes. You got your Chrome.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no. Is it Chrome? Is it a Chrome os?

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's what it was. Android or Chrome, who knows?

[Jeff Jarvis]

You're what. What do you do for a living? You don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks like it's Android. It looks pretty Androidy to me. But that's okay. What do you care what the OS is?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because. Well, because Chrome OS has the Files app and the Files app allows you to annotate.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I bet this has a Files app, so that doesn't.

[Benito]

That app doesn't exist on Android.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know. I couldn't find it, but I don't know. Or you got to do some kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Open this app. It's called Files on this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, now, now. Okay, now open a PDF, allow files.

[Leo Laporte]

To send you notifications. Sure. Now I'm in files and I want to look for. I don't know if I have any PDFs. Let's see here if I can find a PDF, search for PDFs. Nope. Oh, you know why? Because this is searching on the. On the tablet. Let me look at my drive for a PDF. That's why.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

So this will go to drive. This is the file.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's good. All right, good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, this is real time help PDF.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's what you. You've done for a living.

[Leo Laporte]

Here is your book.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You can't mark that.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I won't do that. I will do AI in the Valley. This was one of our guests, right? AI Valley. Here's the PDF. This is Gary. Gary Riv. It's going to be on the show soon. Isn't he Gary Rifflin.

[Benito]

It's gonna be on Twitter on Sunday.

[Leo Laporte]

On Sunday it's gonna be. He wrote. He wrote AI Valley. Right. Am I wrong? I don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right, we can do this next week. I didn't mean to catch.

[Leo Laporte]

Scroll up. I just need to mark it. Right. I need to mark it up. So presumably this is going to have some sort of. Where do you get the markup? So there's some text. I don't see any tools open with. Well, you could open it with something.

[Paris Martineau]

But he wants to keep it in drag.

[Leo Laporte]

Annotate with Cami.

[Paris Martineau]

But what's Cami?

[Leo Laporte]

It's a PDF annotation tool. Yeah, right.

[Paris Martineau]

But then you're gonna have to pay for that at that point. Just get the market.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or. Or it does it up in the cloud and you can't do it in a plane.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, these. This may not be a good test because I don't know if it's locked. Right. But anyway, any who folks for crowdsourcing, let me know. Or you could just ask, you know, Gemini. Gemini would know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I know better.

[Paris Martineau]

Jiminy Cricket.

[Leo Laporte]

It'll make up an answer.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This week an old guy's trying to figure out how computers work. Thanks for joining us. That'd be a fun show.

[Paris Martineau]

As the chatgpt Rose says Leo finds a way to turn every three hours the I podcast into through the rabbit.

[Leo Laporte]

Ears and then they grab it and then they put it and it goes down the rabbit ears into your TV set. Where it finds Paris Martineau. She is a trained professional journalist. You can reach her cycling through nyc. That's her website. Wonderful to see It. Have a great wedding. Is it you that is getting married?

[Paris Martineau]

No, it is not me that's getting married.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Are you in the wedding?

[Paris Martineau]

My friend. My friend got married this weekend and I was the maid of honor and it was.

[Jacob Ward]

Congratulations.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, as you should be.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you wear a lovely dress or did you wear the dress?

[Paris Martineau]

I did wear a druvly. I wore lovely dress. Many people said I was the most competent maid of honor they've ever seen. A compliment I did not expect.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a. A word that you want to hear.

[Paris Martineau]

Or like when it comes to maids.

[Leo Laporte]

Of honor, I, I didn't realize that competent.

[Paris Martineau]

I. I accomplished a lot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did you. Did you do the toast?

[Paris Martineau]

I did. I made a lot of people cry, which was, I think, part of the competence.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Aren't you supposed to make them laugh?

[Paris Martineau]

I made them laugh.

[Leo Laporte]

No, cry's good. Cries good. Any of us.

[Paris Martineau]

There was. There was a laugh. There was a cry. We ended with a laugh.

[Benito]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

So nice to see you, Paris. Jeff Jarvis, professor of emeritus of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the city. This train now at State University. Is it Mary Jane? Mary. Mount Montclair State Marijuana.

[Paris Martineau]

State University.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That would be. I'm getting punchy robot going. I hope you notice Paris has now come down a bit. I think, I think maybe.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, listen, I feel a tightness in my chest that was not there.

[Leo Laporte]

Three hours ago, but perhaps I need a neuro gummy.

[Paris Martineau]

I. I gotta. I gotta hit another one. I may be coming down a little bit.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

[Leo Laporte]

See how many days you go without sleeping. Wouldn't that be fun?

[Paris Martineau]

Well, it's really fun. I don't think I'd be the first person to do that. You know, I'd be smart.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I see Paris. The reason she's pushing for the 24 hour show is she wants to be like Senator Booker and do the whole thing.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, that's what I'm saying is right now we're in a prime period for the next couple weeks where I got nothing but time. I could take as many hours of the 24 hour show as you want me to.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so it doesn't have to be for New Year. It could.

[Paris Martineau]

No, no. I'm saying it could just be a random festival, a random day where we want to raise some money for twit. And I'll be there for as many hours as you want. West by Northwest A telethon I can do a tap dance.

[Leo Laporte]

Benito, do you.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't do one, but I could.

[Benito]

I mean, listen, I'm not doing the whole 24 hours, but I'm down.

[Leo Laporte]

Neuro gummies are on me.

[Paris Martineau]

I was gonna say we could. There's quite a few in here. We could send it around.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm tempted. Every time I mention this to Lisa, she says no just like that.

[Paris Martineau]

Get in the comments. People Advocate for the 24 hour lives wish to see and try to get.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You under three hours. Hours, not 24 hours.

[Paris Martineau]

No, we've already like. We're already at three hours.

[Leo Laporte]

What's no, we're at two hours and 40 minutes. We're good. We're golden.

[Paris Martineau]

It's only 20.

[Leo Laporte]

We went a little long. 21 more BS out and it'll be a half hour show. It'll be great. Jeff's books are of course the Gutenberg parenthesis, which you must get in paperback or hardcover from your favorite bookstore. And the web we weave. And it was independent bookstore day this weekend. I hope you went out and bought some copies of Jeff's book at your favorite independent bookstore. Keep them in business because otherwise it's all Amazon all the way down.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'll be recording magazine, I think next week.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, good. Oh, good.

[Paris Martineau]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Although get the book because then you have the pictures, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No pictures.

[Paris Martineau]

There's no pictures.

[Leo Laporte]

There's no pictures. You did it. Wait a minute. You did a book called magazine that had no.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Imagine what it would take to clear the images. Oh, that cover was. Oh, no, it's. It would have been possible.

[Paris Martineau]

Have you ever interacted with a media lawyer working on image copyright? They basically just shoot you with a gun and tell you to go away. That's their whole job.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't do that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Better off dead than trying to get.

[Leo Laporte]

Can't do that. All right, so might as well get the audiobook. You're not missing nothing. On the other hand, this show, you should watch the video because there's lots of good pictures in this show.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

As always, I don't want to end the show because you know why? Because it's a sad. Because we're lonely after it's over. Yeah, I appreciate it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So when you go downstairs, does Lisa say, how was it?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, she says, how was it? She has not yet gotten the point where she says, was it over three hours?

[Jeff Jarvis]

You want to go down how long?

[Leo Laporte]

I go down and I say, it was only. It was just like two and a half hours and she knows your life.

[Paris Martineau]

Two hours and change. She doesn't realize the change is pretty way. Yeah. Hey, that's still chain.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks for joining us everybody. We'll see you next time on this week's Thinking. Intelligent machines marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.