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Ed Zitron
Call Zone Media hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Z Tron.
Adam Becker
Better Offline
Ed Zitron
as ever. Go to the Episode Notes to sign up to the newsletter, please do the premium Ital make me money buy a Fuck Data Centers T shirt or join one of the assorted communities. If you ever want to fall further into the larger zitronverse. But today we're joined by the author of More Everything Forever. That's right, journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker. Adam, how you doing?
Adam Becker
I'm doing well, Ed. How are you?
Ed Zitron
Got a new podcast, don't you?
Adam Becker
Yeah, I do. It's called Dreaming against the Machine, and it just came out pretty recently.
Ed Zitron
What's it about?
Adam Becker
Well, it's like a more optimistic version of this podcast. Okay.
Ed Zitron
No, I like this. I want to hear about that. Tell me.
Adam Becker
Yeah, so, you know, I spent a lot of time when I was writing my book, More Everything, Forever thinking about terrible people and their bad ideas about the future. And that made me want to think more about good ideas about the future and people who I actually like. And so the podcast is about trying to imagine what a realistic good future could look like.
Ed Zitron
Can you give me some examples?
Adam Becker
Oh, no, I have no idea.
Ed Zitron
Oh, okay. Yeah, still working that one out.
Adam Becker
Yeah, still figuring that out. I mean, that's sort of. The podcast is me thinking out loud about these things with different guests each week. So. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly a future where we found a way to wrench power away from these tech billionaires. And it's not a future that involves, like, you know, space colonization and super intelligent AI. But more than that, I'm still figuring that out. That's. That's what the podcast is for.
Ed Zitron
Yeah, I do get a good amount of people who email. Like. Yeah, well, why don't you. Do you talk about more positive things on the show? And A, it's tough to find them, but B, also, sometimes when I do it, people get mad at me.
Adam Becker
Yeah, but like, I don't think that
Ed Zitron
you missed the shill.
Adam Becker
I don't think you mind people being mad at you, Ed.
Ed Zitron
I. Yeah, I don't. But at the same time, it's like when I'm. I mentioned this Nebula X1 projector thing I really like. It's quite expensive. It's like this insane thing in, like a box as a projector. It's like, got the speakers you could plug in. They're all wireless and it's beautiful. It works really well. I talked to about that once and I have people email me saying, edge, you're a shill. You're being a shill. You can't. And it's like, oh, my Christ, do I have to hate everything? Because there's plenty. I do. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, I feel like you get plenty. Yeah, but I feel like there are some really good things. Like, I feel like if America was not under the Gastocracy right now, we would be in a kind of golden era of solar. Like, I have solar on my house in Vegas and barely pay an electricity bill. It's kind of magic. Kind of amazing.
Adam Becker
Yeah, but, yeah, no, I mean, there's There's a lot of great technology and solar is a really good example. Like, the solar technology has gotten really great. Battery technology has gotten really great. I think that these are wonderful things. And yeah, if we weren't subsidizing fossil fuels and actually thinking clearly about both what is the, you know, the cheapest and most effective sources of energy and what would be best for the climate and the planet, you know, I think it would be pretty clear that we'd be going through an even faster energy transition than we are already.
Ed Zitron
Wouldn't energy also be cheaper if we were mass solar? I'm sure someone's going to hate me for saying that.
Adam Becker
I think that's true. I'd have to look at the numbers. But I mean, solar is, I believe, the cheapest source of energy at the moment and has been for a bit.
Ed Zitron
But what if instead we could just have natural gas everywhere, which is very cheap, I'm hearing at the moment. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of it. Nothing's happened to the supply. Everyone's fine.
Adam Becker
Yeah, everything's fine. Nothing is broken. And really tired of winning.
Ed Zitron
Yeah. Talking of thinking, though, we're talking beyond. Just before we got on, like one of the most insane things I think I have heard a tech CEO say, and I say this as someone who's heard Alex Karp speak before, Marc Andreessen saying he doesn't have introspection.
Adam Becker
Yes. This was kind of my favorite thing that's happened recently, you know, Right.
Ray Porter
For.
Adam Becker
For values of favorite, where, I mean, like horrible and unhinged. But yeah, no, he, he said that he doesn't introspect and that introspection was invented in Vienna 100 years ago by Sigmund Freud. And like, okay, what do you think that, I don't know, Hamlet was about?
Ed Zitron
What do you think? All right, what was Hamlet about? Hamlet was about guy who cried a lot when his life was awesome. Same with Macbeth. Same deal exactly. Like, what does he do mid someone? Ice dream drugs.
Adam Becker
But like, what does he think?
Ed Zitron
Any art just ruining Shakespeare life on air?
Adam Becker
Yeah, exactly. Like all art, like any, any, any form of art pretty much ever created by anyone at any point in history. Like, why does he believe this? I think, you know, it doesn't seem like Marcus doesn't think. He doesn't. He doesn't introspect. But, but what's going on in that
Ed Zitron
magical brain all the time?
Adam Becker
That magical brain, the egg, like brain
Ed Zitron
that he has the fucking like the Dr. Robotnik. Yes.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
It's so funny as well, because I don't know. I'm constantly introspective to the point where I'm, like, tearing up my own theories and things that I've done and thought about again and again and again. It's one of the enjoyable things about being human.
Adam Becker
Yeah, exactly.
Ed Zitron
One's ability to reflect.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Does kind of make sense when you look at all the AI stuff, though.
Adam Becker
Yeah. I mean, I think that for someone like Andreessen, he's gotten so wealthy and so powerful, he's not used to hearing no. And introspection from that perspective is just an opportunity to tell yourself no, and why would he ever do that to himself? But, you know, LLMs definitely never introspect. They're not really capable of it.
Ed Zitron
Yeah.
Adam Becker
And, you know, we've got this chain of reasoning stuff that's supposedly like introspection, but it's not. And I think that if you don't introspect, that's gonna make it so much easier to be fooled into thinking that these things are thinking.
Ed Zitron
Yeah. And also, I like the chain of thought reasoning, because if you think that's what thinking's like, you must not think so hard. Yeah. Because it's just. What is thinking? Well, every time I hear literally anything, I think, what would they. What do they mean by that? What am I? It's like every single thought you have is a Tucker Carlson monologue. What do they mean?
Adam Becker
Yes.
Ed Zitron
What is that?
Adam Becker
Yes.
Ed Zitron
What do you mean? How's my day? How's my day to day? It's the afternoon. Is it, like. Is it just the daytime? Do I care about nighttime now? Does this person care about me? Do they care about my family? What's going on here? Just, like, in this constant state of, like, confusion.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
And then using way too much. Way too much energy to just go, yes, fine. Yeah, I'm all right. You know. Yeah. Keep yourself busy. It's just. What I don't get is what I mean. I take that back. Yeah. I actually totally get this. But if you're that rich, you have so much more time to do so many more interesting things and think about them. For example.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
You know, just like a book, like a song, or at that price, at the amount of money that he has, he could just be like, I wouldn't mind seeing, I don't know, Public Enemy. I bet I could just call all of them and pay them all to just do a concert in my living room. Don't think Marc Andreessen is a big Public Enemy fan. But just for the sake of example.
Adam Becker
Right?
Ray Porter
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
And it's very, it gets me back to this thought. I've had this whole time with the LLM era where it's like, this is just the digital dunce cap era. This is when we find out all the people who just have not been thinking the entire time, who just, all they, all they've been doing is just walking around going like, money, money, money growth. Is it like Facebook do like fate? It reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg. Give him a million dollars. Wait, he needs $10 million. Give him 20 just in case someone else gives him 10. Just this constant state of like angry anxiety.
Adam Becker
Yeah. I mean, God, what was it? I saw this, this LLM startup advertising somewhere online that was saying that they were, you know, going to do your intellectual labor for you and they were gonna do your homework for you and stuff like that in school. And like, do you know what intellectual labor is? Saying that you're going to do it for me? Because they were saying then you just get to reap the benefits of the intellectual labor. I'm like, okay, saying that you're going to do it for me and then I get to reap the benefits is sort of like saying you have a robot that's going to do pull ups badly and if I just watch it do pull ups badly then I will somehow get stronger. Like that's just not how it works. That's not how thinking works.
Ed Zitron
What kind of reminds me, I saw this Andre Carpath, you remember Andre, Andre Karpath is the co founder, one of the many co founders of OpenAI.
Adam Becker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ed Zitron
And he, he, he posted this thing the other day. He's like, yeah, spending hours working on like a private wiki for all of his research. Not his research project, but stuff he was like looking into strongly. And it's like, and it's like, yeah, and then you can use an LLM to ask it questions. It's like, why? Like just, just why? Yeah, like I would get it if he was like, to be clear, if he was saying, I, as a scientist I'm collecting tons of data and I want to have it in a place I can poke at it. Fine. It didn't seem he was suggesting it was very much like just researching the stuff he was looking at on like his personal knowledge base. It's like, what is going on in your brain, mate? What are you thinking about all day? It just like, oh, wouldn't it be great if all these thoughts I was having were in a wiki format in Obsidian? I mean, oh Christ.
Adam Becker
Also the whole point of a wiki is that anyone can edit it. Why does he want anyone to be able to edit something that he's using?
Ed Zitron
Well, it's not anyone, it's just him. Yeah, it's just him, but it's just his wiki.
Adam Becker
Right, but that's just. But that's just a document. That's just like a word document. That's. I don't understand.
Ed Zitron
No, I don't either. And like I. There was a guy underneath there who. This is going to be in a newsletter I'm working on today that will actually be out before this. Whatever. Yeah. And there was a guy below beneath it who said, yeah, I'm doing a less professional version of this using OpenClaw. It's like to catalog what great thoughts. Exactly. That's what grand missives from the depths of the brain minds do you fuck with have going on. Because every time I see my new game is to. Any time I see someone just being like I'm. I'm running 11 agents concurrently and they're doing this and that, I try and find what it is they're working on. I've never been able to. Never. There are images of like, there's like a photo of them with like 19 terminal windows, the CC usage saying they spend two and a half thousand dollars on a $100 a month subscription. But you can never just like look at them. You never feel like, oh wow, you're cooking.
Adam Becker
They don't know what they're working on half the time. Right. They've got one of those processes is like an agent where they asked it, oh, come up with ideas. Right?
Ed Zitron
Yeah, come up with ideas. Work on an interface series to observe in figma and then have another, have another agent look at that and say this is the one. And then at the end something will happen.
Adam Becker
I'm sorry, can we just pause for a second? The fact that there's something called figma, like it's just a Ligma joke. I don't understand.
Ed Zitron
It is.
Adam Becker
How did they do this?
Ed Zitron
Yeah, but figma's kind of use like figma is absolutely.
Adam Becker
I'm not saying it's not useful, I'm just saying the name. The name, yeah.
Ed Zitron
Having to walk around saying Figma.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
It's kind of like having to sell Hadoop. Yes, Hadoop or Super Base. Yeah, Versal's fine. But there are a lot of. Even Anthropic is a stupid name. I don't. I like. I think we need to return to an era where we only let Taiwan name our companies. Because look, you got Hon Hai Precision Limited. Now there's a company name, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Yeah, that's exactly what they do. Exactly. Nothing fancy. Don't need to. You got Quanta. I assume that's something to do with one of their founders. Maybe they named it. If you named it before the 80s, it's fine. But like no more startup names. You can't do dot ly and anything. Figma. Nope. Call it like, I don't know, Art Corporation, Dot Biz. Like I don't care. Just make this easier me. But nevertheless, it's, it's. We were also talking about this beforehand. There is another theory that I'm growing with LLM Swell. Which is. And I'm specifically leading to the journalists using AI1. It kind of feels like all of these agentic quote unquote processes are taking up more energy than just doing them normally. Yep.
Adam Becker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Ed Zitron
Way more.
Adam Becker
Yeah. Because like, you know, all of this just feels like people trying to avoid the hard work of having to think. Right. Especially if you're looking at people using this instead, you know, as a way of writing. The old saw is that writing is thinking. And I also think, you know, I mean another old saw is that writing is rewriting. Right? And so when people say, oh, I'm just using it for editing and like that's part of the writing process. If you're using it for editing, you're using it for writing. And that's like, that's not good.
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Cal Penn
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive Sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
Ray Porter
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
Ed Zitron
I was like, no.
Ray Porter
At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.
Cal Penn
Listen to Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ed Zitron
This Wired piece was particularly bizarre. Like I don't need to think about Kevin Roos too much. I don't think he, he certainly doesn't and I won't. But Alex Heath. Alex is, Alex is weird one because he's been around tech journalism for 15 something years. Doesn't seem like a terrible bloke. But he describes this process of writing his newsletter. Let's see this where he, he's where he claims he, he feels like he is cheating. And he, and I quote Max F. The reporter Wired. He sat down with me last week to showcase how he's integrated Anthropic's Claude code work, co work even into his journalistic process. The AI tool is connected to his Gmail, Google Calendar granola, AI transcription service and notion notes. He also built a detailed skill, a custom set of instructions. It's a text file to help Claude write in his style, including the ten commandments of writing. Like Alex Heath, the skill includes previous articles he's written, instructions on, how he likes his newsletters to be structured and notes on his own voice and writing style. Then Claude Cowork then automates the drafting process that used to take place in his head. To your point, you were completely correct.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
After the agent finishes its draft, Heath goes back and forth with it for up to 30 minutes suggesting revisions. It's quite an involved process and he still writes some parts of the story himself. But Heath says the workflow saves him hours every week and that he now spends 30, 40% less time writing. Yeah, mate, how much time do you spend prompting?
Adam Becker
Yeah, and also 30 to 40%. Even if that's accurate. 30 to 40% less time in order to produce something that's writing in the smeared out voice of the Internet. And yes, you're trying to get it to write more like you, but come on. And also, you know, I just, I don't understand why they would be willing to relinquish not just the process but also the sort of like intellectual ownership. I don't mean like you know, in the, in the like intellectual property sense,
Ed Zitron
but like, yeah, like the, I wrote this. Yeah.
Adam Becker
And like the, the way that you know something when you wrote it that you can't know even if you were there for the editing. Like I know, I mean I, you know, I'm, I'm getting older as we all do until we die. And as I get older, my memory is, you know, not as good as it used to be. I think it's still pretty good. But, you know, I have trouble remembering all sorts of things that I didn't used to have trouble remembering. But I know the stuff that I've written inside and out because I was in there, you know, in the trenches with it. Writing it.
Ed Zitron
Yeah.
Adam Becker
And. And so I know it, you know, chapter and verse. Why would you give up having that kind of knowledge of your own work and your own thinking?
Ed Zitron
Well, that's the thing. Look, for me, with my writing as well, it's not just like the writing and the reading, all that. It's. I will be writing something and I will think. And in my case, it would be like, didn't the information mentioned in June 2024, the OpenAI's annualized revenue? Like, I will go through an insane chain of events in my brain, but it's because of my interaction with the work that I remember that stuff isn't just. And then I linked to thingy and then thing. It was way that that reminds me of something I was working on in 2024, 2025. And I'm not sure that. I'm not sure that these people have had that joy of an experience. Yeah, I don't even mean this condescendingly. I just mean there is a certain joy to being like, way I remember this and digging something out that you painstakingly read and probably didn't even use at the time.
Adam Becker
Yep. Yeah, no, that's.
Ed Zitron
It sucks. And also, it seems like more work.
Adam Becker
Yes, I agree.
Ed Zitron
This seems like way more work to me. Like, I. Okay, I connect all of these things and I make sure they work. And I've written a long text document. Also, he says that it's got all of his old articles in it. Wouldn't that fill up that context window anyway? Yeah, putting all that technical stuff aside.
Adam Becker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I just. I don't understand because, like, if you don't write it, then you're not thinking your way through it. And like, yeah, okay. I go into writing something and I have sort of an idea of what it's going to be, but it's as I write it that I realize what I actually think about these things. And I get to a spot in the writing where I'm stuck and I realize, oh, I'm stuck because there was something that I thought I understood or two ideas that I thought were connected. Now I'm realizing the connection is less Clear or my understanding is less good than I thought it was and so I have to sit down and work it out or I have to go check an idea that I realized I was taking for granted and maybe it wasn't true. And then this stuff is out there in the world with my name on it and I just can't imagine having something out in the world with my name on it that I wasn't, you know, dead sure of and felt that I had thought my own way through on. Otherwise I die of shame.
Ed Zitron
I Same.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Like, I fuck stuff up. I make typos. People love to email me about them. Yeah. And they sure do more than they say. Nice things, in fact. But it's. It's the beauty of that, beauty of that fuck up that makes it mine.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
But on top of that. Yeah. Though I. You have said this and Cal Newport recently said it as well where it's. People are scared of thinking.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
And I extend that. Cal also said concentration.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
I extend it to friction. I think that that moment you just described when you're like, why. What does, what does that mean? What does that mean? Wait, what? No, wait, I don't get that. Yeah. That moment is deeply uncomfortable. That is introspection.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Like, and it sucks. And when you don't. Like, I spent a lot of last night learning about the Japanese economy because me curious little critter. And it does tie into things in worrying ways. But. And there were moments where I'm like, great, okay. Oh, the Plaza record. What's that? Oh, Christ, I have to learn another thing. Oh, what's this? Oh, there's some sort of dilemma. Oh, Japanese economy. And there were constant points. I'm like, what does this. Why am I fucking stupid? Why don't I understand this? But that's how you get smart. That's how you learn things. And you. I don't see how you do that. Having an LLM burp stuff up for you, even if it's based on things you have said.
Adam Becker
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Also, if it's just reading stuff you've written before, is that like at some point it's going to stop being you entirely. Because it's just eventually it's just going to be more AI than person. Very weird.
Adam Becker
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And you're also, I mean, this to me is bringing me back to something that I said, I think the first time I was on your podcast, which is that in a way this is taking the sort of billionaire experience and making it like the billionaire cognitive experience and making it available for everyone because billionaires never have to do anything uncomfortable like think.
Ed Zitron
Yeah.
Adam Becker
I mean, it's also reminding me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which I just found, and I'm going to read it to you. Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin, all your chairs cost $20,000 and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences in terms of cognitive impairment. It's probably. It's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day.
Ed Zitron
Yeah, I think I'd be fine, but. Yeah, Yeah, I mean, I would be good. I think $1 billion. I'd be just fine. I feels like a skill issue to me.
Adam Becker
Oh, it's definitely a skill issue. Although you're also the of. You know that the arrested development meme of like, no, it never works for anyone else, but it just might work for us.
Ed Zitron
Yeah, exactly. People fool themselves into think this will work for them.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
I. And I also think that there is a busy box mentality to it as well. When you start using these things, and it's very clear from the moment you start using them that they will not just do anything on their own. You can't just be like, do this. Yeah. Like, just. Just check this out. What do you like, Will you do this? And it spits out lots of stories about things being one shot. It. But very few actual examples that matter to me or really anyone I talk to. It's like, oh, it fixed one problem. But you can't just say, do this entire task.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
So once you've done that, I don't know. My reaction to that is always, the fuck is this. I don't log onto a website, have it break, and then go, that's okay. I use another website. But I think that there is something about the experience that because it's so convoluted and you have to contrive all of these little doohickeys, like fucking Pee Wee Herman making breakfast, that when you get to the end of it, you're like, wow, I'm so smart. I made the. I made it do this. But also, I'm going to give it credit for the thing that I ended up doing most of the work on, if I'm honest.
Adam Becker
Right. I mean, but this is also. This is part of why I think the people who are most convinced that this is gonna take over every job and one shot everything are so often software engineers. Because, yeah, okay, this thing is changing the way that people code and does seem to be able to write some code for some people, but that's a limited human task. Right. And even for people whose job is to be a software engineer, the actual writing of code is just one part of the. Of what the job is. And the thing that's. I think that the trap that these people fall into a lot of the time is they believe that their job, software engineering, writing code is like the. The ultimate human intellectual achievement. And so if you have something that can do that, it must be able to do anything. And that's just not true.
Ed Zitron
And it can also. It can do that kind of.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Like, it's like it can write code.
Adam Becker
Yep.
Ed Zitron
But no one also can seem to explain what that means in the end, because all these companies, it does sound like you've got companies where you've got a bunch of people just not writing any code. And I hate to ask now what. Yeah, like, really, they're not firing anyone. Largely across the entire software stack, things seem to be getting worse. So. Yeah, good.
Adam Becker
I mean, it's like. Yeah. I mean, Anthropic's Claude code, you know, code base dropped and they're like, yeah, we wrote Claude code with Claude code. And then there were a bunch of coders in there saying, yeah, I can tell that you did.
Ed Zitron
I also love that we're meant to be scared of Claude Mythos. This thing that can find this obvious marketing trick.
Adam Becker
Yes.
Ed Zitron
That can find any number. It can find every vulnerability and everything. And this is other than the fact it required human. Human people to actually find the vulnerabilities and coaching and.
Adam Becker
Yep.
Ed Zitron
And indeed, like, one of the main. But one of the main exploits, free bsd, was not actually exploitable. You could just make it crash, like, regardless. Yeah. But they couldn't find the. The vulnerabilities in their own software.
Adam Becker
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure, like, I'm very willing to believe that it's a helpful tool for finding certain kinds of vulnerabilities, but you're completely right. This is a marketing gimmick. Come on.
Cindy Crawford
It is.
Ed Zitron
And it's also. I'm kind of honestly a little bit scared of how well it worked on people. Yeah. Like, how many people just like, yeah, this is the scariest thing ever. Because I couldn't see it.
Adam Becker
It's because we've got this. This narrative that comes out of these, you know, AI cults, like the rationalists, that that AI is going to take over the world and be able to, you know, make itself super intelligent and end Humanity, once it's able to write its own code and all of that's just a sci fi fantasy. But you know, it makes it very easy for Anthropic to do these sorts of marketing gimmicks or. Oh man, I don't remember who it was who pointed this out, but someone. I saw someone online say it's not just that it's a marketing gimmick, it's also that this is a way of sort of soft launching it as an enterprise only product that's not available to the general consumer.
Ed Zitron
And you can tell they're kind of toying with that idea too. But it's not really obvious what the plan is. Yeah, because the way they sell this shit is having 1 million different guys with an AI avatar on Twitter posting that. This is what changes everything every time they do anything. Yeah, like, and I just, I've also been playing a fun game which is called go and try and work out what these big integrations do. It's not a very. Okay, when I say it's fun, I mean it's exhausting because I went on the Goldman Sachs and Anthropic. They're automating accounting and compliance roles and. But don't worry, the firm is in the early staging stages of developing agents based on Anthropic's model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. What are those functions? Who the fuck knows? They don't say. They just don't say. They like, they don't because they probably don't have an answer. I want to, I want to see those contracts. I want to see the actual outcomes. But it's. I mean this is kind of a vague point to say, but I feel kind of insane that we're still talking about it on this level. Yeah, it's still, we're still talking about it like we're trying to establish whether the Sasquatch exists.
Adam Becker
Yeah, I mean I just, the, the amount of vibe based crap around all of this, like to me, I mean because of my background as an astrophysicist, to me, like the, the number one thing that is clearly just Vibes is this whole push for orbital data centers, which is just like what the stupidest.
Ed Zitron
I feel like we might discuss this before, but it's like isn't. Isn't the amount of power they create? Like wouldn't they. Isn't it an insane amount of power for like 1 megawatt? I haven't looked too deep into the tag yet.
Adam Becker
I don't remember how much they like I don't remember how, like what the numbers are for power generation, but I know that bleeding off heat is a serious problem. And so because like, space is a vacuum, vacuum is an insulator. And so even though it's cold, you can't actually get rid of the excess heat very well. And so you need these giant radiator vanes that are bigger than the entire International Space Station just for one data center. Yeah. And it's just not going to happen. And that's just one issue. You've got the radiation. You've got the fact that you can't upgrade the damn thing without doing a spacewalk. Like what? What the hell are they thinking?
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Cal Penn
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far From Earth.
Ray Porter
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo. Is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point, it was. Would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me, and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say, like, oh, my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.
Cal Penn
Listen to Irsay the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ed Zitron
So I just looked it up real quick. Projects like Star Cloud aim for roughly 8 kilowatt of power in early prototypes.
Adam Becker
That's not enough.
Ed Zitron
Well, just to give you some context, an MVL 72 of GB272 GPUs is about 142 kilowatts. Yeah, so that. That's probably not gonna work. No, that's an. But you know what? That's also insane. I read about that. I read a headline about that thing in the New York Times, read one in cnbc. It makes me think that if I was an evil person, like a. Like a top hat and like a little curly moustache of some sort, like, I could just get so far just being like, yeah, you know, I. I used the model the other day, and it actually is fully alive. It's fully alive. And it told me it's coming for your job specifically. And then just go on being verified and, like, give them the job. Be like, yeah, the AI bot came up with this, mate. They're coming for your wife. I would be on the front page of the New York Times. Terrifying message from British traveler. Yeah, I would just claim I was from the future. Like, that would Be in the. Kevin Roose would be immediately intrigued.
Adam Becker
It's funny, I was about to say Kevin Roose would believe you.
Ed Zitron
Yeah, no, I think, I think he would hit me with a bean can. Like Syla in Heroes. Little reference for those listening. Remember heroes from decades ago. But it's just, it's frustrating as well because even though you got the big blinking warning signs and you especially like, you've really gone deep into how nutty these billionaires are and how distant the things they're saying are from reality, it is. Ours are still somewhat of a niche belief, which is strange still.
Adam Becker
Yeah, I know, I know. It's like we're the reality based community and somehow this is not the dominant narrative or even one of the dominant voices in the narrative. Instead it's like, okay, there's a few of us and the crazy people are just louder and have way more money.
Ed Zitron
How do you see any of this going? Like, just. You don't have to come up with a perfect dance here. I realized somewhat on the spot. But it's like, how does this realistically go from here? Because even putting aside the economics, it doesn't seem to be getting better in a way that matters.
Adam Becker
Yeah, I mean, we're in a bubble. It's going to crash at some point, Right. That bubble is going to pop. And at that point I'm not completely sure what's going to happen. It's going to depend on, you know, where we are when the bubble pops, what happens or what's happening happening when it pops. But I think that we're going to see a few things, right? We're going to see. I would like to. Well, there's a few different things that could happen. Yeah, sorry, I'm stumbling over my words here, but it's okay. I think that what the tech industry or the leaders of the tech industry would like to happen at that point is they would like to use the fact that by then they will have and kind of already have eaten all of the new computing hardware and created these giant data centers and try to repurpose them for something else. Because at this point, it's hard to get a stick of RAM if you're not using it for a giant data center. And I think they love that. They want everyone to be using cloud computing and not doing any computing on their own actual computers. So they want to take that power that they've taken and keep it. And so they try to come up with some other thing to be the next hype cycle that will incorporate the earlier hype cycles of AI and crypto and all the other stuff that came before and say, oh, no, no, no, this is the big thing and it's going to make all of the other things work and it'll be different this time. We promise, guys. We swear the same way that they did with this versus crypto. And it's going to be the same people shilling it, both in the industry and the industry watchers. You know, the same way that Kevin Roose was a shill for crypto, now he's a shill for AI. In any event, that's what Quantum.
Ed Zitron
Yeah, if you see Kevin. If Kevin Roose writes about quantum, that's how, you know the AI bubble is burst.
Adam Becker
Yeah, I think that's probably right.
Ed Zitron
He's running for the exits.
Adam Becker
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. But that's what the industry wants, right? You know, the other or another way that it could go go is when that bubble pops, you're going to see the current AI backlash, which I think that outside of the tech industry, AI is not actually very popular at all. And I think that people in the tech industry really underestimate that. And if there's a bubble that pops and that leads to a crash, that's going to supercharge the backlash against AI in a way that the tech industry is just not prepared for, I think. And I would like to see that some kind of reckoning.
Ed Zitron
So I want to be. I'm going to lead into a sentence that you're going to almost immediately guess what I'm talking about. I want to be clear that what happened to Sam Altman, the person who threw a Molotov cocktail, the person that threw that shot bullets, that is morally reprehensible. You cannot do that. It's disgusting. I'm against it. I will say that I'm surprised that these companies are surprised because it's like for the best part of four years, they have said, we are taking your job. We need everything. As you, a regular person, struggle to get credit or thrive or pay your student loans, everything's more expensive, everything sucks. But we, the AI industry, get whatever we want. And our explicit goal is to take your job. And the thing we own will control everything and all sources of income, and everything will go through us. You should be scared, because we're scared, too. I feel like they should have seen this. I don't think it should have happened to them. I want to be really clear for legal reasons, but it's like, why are they surprised? Like, this is exactly the like you've been scaring mental, you've been scaring everyone. But mentally unstable people will also get scared. And it's horrible. And it's horrible because it's like, I don't want more of this to happen, but I don't see how it stops.
Adam Becker
Yeah. No. I mean, they are not used to their actions having consequences.
Ed Zitron
Yes.
Adam Becker
And again, you know, billionaire brain. Right. When you're a billionaire, your actions pretty much don't have consequences in a way. Again, what happened with Sam Altman and the Molotov cocktail, that is morally reprehensible. That stuff should not happen. But in a way, the reason that was a headline was that it was a billionaire who almost faced a consequence.
Ed Zitron
Yes. And someone who has said. And it was. I've recently checked this since I think it was April 2023, Sam Altman has been saying, I'm scared of what we're building. Yep. Dario Amade has been saying for years, this will destroy all white collar labor. Yep. They have been saying, we always need more compute. And as I think that regular people face this as well. I don't think an average person feels like they are taken super seriously by the world. The world does not feel hospitable to the average person. But every time an AI person says literally anything, it's one page news and it's taken with the. The complete seriousness. The government has meetings about it. Yep. So, Yeah. I don't know. Why would people possibly feel angry. Yeah. About any of this? It's just the thing that I'm saying in the newsletter as well. It's like, I think these people should tone down. They've said that we need to tone down the rhetoric. I agree. I think that they should stop talking about the models the way they do.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
I also don't see this alarmism with the AI psychosis.
Adam Becker
Yeah. No. I mean, it's really, it's really striking the things that they're willing to sort of incite a moral panic about and the things that they won't. Right. They want to get people worried about this stuff taking all white collar jobs. They want to get people worried that it's powerful enough to destroy the world and that it's the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. And they don't want to talk about the people right now who are, you know, going insane and dying because of the existing products that we already have.
Ed Zitron
Yeah. And I think also here's the thing that you, you will. Did you see the. The one of the blokes One of the blokes, the one who threw the Molotov cocktail, apparently he had posted Yudkowski's if if. If they build it will shit myself. Yeah, whatever it's called.
Adam Becker
Yeah, yeah. Like if it's just like everyone dies. Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Just like. Oh, I don't know. Are you surprised that people who have been. That you've monetized scaring people. Uh huh. And people are scared.
Adam Becker
Yeah, yeah. No, and I mean, you know, for all that Altman says that he disagrees with Yudkowski, Altman also said that he thinks Yudkowski probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, which I just.
Ed Zitron
Which is one of the more. What for?
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Like what? Possibly for strangest man.
Adam Becker
Yeah, no, these guys are just.
Ed Zitron
Weirdest guy we have to hear from Yudkowski with the Novo Pierce price for strange boy. Weirdest, most unnecessary Harry Potter fanfic.
Adam Becker
Yeah.
Ed Zitron
Definitely the most new categories in the Nobel. But it's just. But no, but that's the thing. It's like to your point. Yeah, it's exactly. It is something that Altman claims to not endorse, but wholeheartedly does. Oh, yeah. And what's also interesting is haven't heard anything from Dario Amadei about it.
Adam Becker
Nope.
Ed Zitron
I mean, you'd think within a situation like this, Dario Amade would go out and be like, I'm so sorry it's happening to Sam Altman. It's terrible. It's not.
Adam Becker
Yeah, no, that is a good point. I hadn't thought of that.
Ed Zitron
Kind of respect it.
Adam Becker
Yeah,
Ed Zitron
no, I kind of respect because like, we've really not had men of industry who just fucking hate each other in a while. So I think it's nice to see. Nice to see like some classic robber baron shit. But it's. And now as of the morning of recording this OpenAI an internal memo with a clear purpose of being leaked saying that Anthropic is overstating their revenues. It's just. It's just. It's really. We are getting into the funny part at least.
Adam Becker
Yeah. The cool zone, as it were.
Ed Zitron
Yes, exactly. That's where we're on. It's so unfortunate. On one level, it's very funny. On the other, it's just like we could be doing anything else. Yep.
Adam Becker
No, I mean, these guys love talking about opportunity cost. And like, what about the opportunity cost of like you fucking having your money and your position in society? Because I think that that's just enormous for like the opportunity cost of having a Sam Altman or having an Elon Musk is just so enormous. And they never fucking talk about it because of course they don't.
Ed Zitron
Have you seen. Did you hear about SpaceX's excellent economics? They look, they lost $5 billion last year. Oh, God.
Adam Becker
No, I hadn't heard that. I've been busy with other. Like, with launching my.
Ed Zitron
You've been busy, like, enjoying your life rather than reading Elon Musk about Elon Musk. I will give Elon Musk credit. He has invented a new way to fuck up his company. Just like. Just like attaching an AI company to SpaceX, which has useful products like Starlink that people seem to like.
Adam Becker
Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, if it works, then he has to fuck it up.
Ed Zitron
Right.
Adam Becker
The same way he did with Twitter.
Ed Zitron
Talking of billionaires, have you been looking at Gary Tan?
Adam Becker
No, actually, I haven't. What's he been up to?
Ed Zitron
So he's the head of Y Combinator and he's currently experiencing his own AI psychosis of sort, because he's become. He's become this weird. Like, he has this thing called G Stack, which is his Claude code set up, and it's just. It's literally just Claude md, I believe it's like. And it has. People really like it because people want to get into Y Combinator, right. So they say nice things, but it's been very funny because apparently his website just has like tens of thousands of lines of code on it. Slight. It's. It kind of feels like watching a kid at a cinema arcade machine and they just kind of like, pull. They've not got any money in it. They just put it at the wheel, like Ridge Racer or something. Or like Time Crisis. They got the gun pointing at the screen, no money in there. It's just very weird because I keep getting back to this thing. It's like the glasses from they Live. We're finally seeing who the dunces truly are. All of these people who are allegedly smart are actually the literal opposite.
Adam Becker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Ed Zitron
Yeah. It's unfortunate. Well, why don't we wrap it up there, Adam? Tell us about this new podcast. What sort of things have you got coming down the pike? What plans have you got? Let's end on a high note.
Adam Becker
Absolutely. So the podcast again is called Dreaming against the Machine. And we're launching, as of this recording, we're launching tomorrow. It was our first real episode and we have a bunch of great guests coming up. You're one of them, Ed.
Ed Zitron
Yeah.
Adam Becker
And we've also got. Who else do we have? We've got a bunch of the original AI Biased people like Sophia Noble and, and Cathy o'. Neill. We've got some great sci fi people like Kim Stanley Robinson coming on the podcast. Hell yeah.
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And
Adam Becker
some really great scientists as well, like John DePrescod Weinstein who I'm talking with about Star Trek and also some amazing haters like you or Dave Karp. So yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. The conversations have already, we've already got a few episodes in the can and those conversations have been great. And basically it's going to be a place to try to figure out what a good future might look like and try to look for some hope and be really cringingly sincere and earnest because that's kind of my entire deal.
Ed Zitron
And I think that's the only way to fight against the darkness. Really, like it's the only, the only real way forward is for the light to win, is to actually be sincere about the things we like. Because as much of a haters as I am, I do love the people in this community and the people. You're awesome. Like we can have cool conversations on the show that not help happening elsewhere. I'm glad that someone is doing something positive.
Adam Becker
Thank you. Yeah, I mean that was the idea. It was like there's enough darkness out there if we wanna, if we wanna win this thing. It's not enough to say what we don't like. We gotta talk about what we want.
Ed Zitron
Hell yeah. Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me. We will link to all of your, your various escapades in the pro in the episode notes. Flawless. They're just gonna keep going. I am. Of course, Ed Zitron. You can find me on a monologue this week. I'm not gonna surprise you with Ronan Farrer interview again, but yes, thank you all for listening. Of course, you catch us on the monologue and we'll have some fun interviews. Coming up, everyone. Got the boys from this machine kills coming as well. Anyway, catch you on the monologue, everyone. And thank you, Adam for joining us.
Adam Becker
Thanks, Ed, for having me.
Ed Zitron
Thank you for listening to Better Offline, the editor and composer of the Better. Our Offline theme song is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects@matosowski.com m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezetteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat wheresyoured at to visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.
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Ed Zitron
our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Cindy Crawford
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This is Sophia Donner from OK Storytime this summer. Find your next obsession on Prime Video and listen. We're not saying you need another obsession, but there could be a lot worse ones. Steamy romance, addictive love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice, so why not watch them a third time off campus? L the Love Hypothesis and more Slow Burns Second Chances chemistry you can feel through the screen and it makes you wish you were actually in that movie. We've got Binge worthy series can't miss movies perfect for when you're ignoring your own problems or procrastinating as one does. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime.
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Ed Zitron
People are gonna be obsessed. What do you mean? People hate the sound of chewing. Maybe they won't like the crunch. Maybe we're saved.
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Wait a minute. Yellow.
Ed Zitron
Have you been eating them this whole time? Mmm.
Adam Becker
So tasty.
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Hands off us.
Ed Zitron
M&M's popped caramel. It's more fun together.
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Host: Ed Zitron
Guest: Adam Becker (author and astrophysicist)
Date: April 15, 2026
Podcast Network: Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts
This episode of Better Offline features journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker, author of More Everything, Forever, in a candid conversation with host Ed Zitron. Together, they dissect the relentless and often irrational growth mindset of the tech industry, particularly tech billionaires’ visions for the future and the current AI hype bubble. The discussion traverses everything from the value (and pitfalls) of technology like solar power to the cognitive peculiarities of tech elites, the proliferation of narrative-driven AI promises, and the dangerous consequences of unchecked SaaS and AI evangelism.
Becker and Zitron debate whether true progress is possible under the current tech regime, the cultural and intellectual implications of using AI for creative work, and what a more positive, grounded future for technology could look like. The episode is characterized by sharp wit, frustration with hype cycles, and an earnest longing for sincerity in tech discourse.
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The conversation is cutting, irreverent, deeply skeptical of tech hype and tech overlords, but also earnest in its hope for something better. Both speakers blend humor, personal anecdotes, and sharp analysis to cut through industry spin and call for a return to sincere, grounded technology culture.