Silicon Valley's Military Dilemma
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It's time for Intelligent Machines. Jeff Jarvis is here. Paris has the day off. Emily Forlini from PC Magazine joins us. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw takes a job at OpenAI Anthropic Releases, a new release, very powerful. In fact, it's new releases all around. We're talking AI next on Intelligent Machines. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is Intelligent Machines with Jeff Jarvis and Emily Forlini. Episode 858, recorded Wednesday, February 18, 2026. The itinerant salt miner from Buffalo. It's time for Intelligent Machines, a show about artificial intelligence, robotics and all the smart stuff all around us. And parenthetically, maybe the most important innovation in technology in some time. Jeff Jarvis is here, professor of journalistic Innovation emeritus at the City University of New York. Craig Newmark, School of Graduate. I tried to throw him, but I couldn't. He's the author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis and magazine and the new Hot Type, which you could pre order now. Jeff Jarvis dot com. Hello, Jeff.
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Hello. I'm back on a real microphone. Trying to make it work.
A
Sitting on your coccyx and on a real chair.
B
And you're my L3.
A
L3 is okay. Ish. Well, I'm glad you're feeling a little better. Yeah, yeah.
B
Inch by inch went grocery shopping today. These are major victories.
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So we have another man down. Paris is out today because her sinuses are killing her. She's got. She's had an affection for a long time. I feel like she's been putting up with this. I thought it was just me making her angry, but now I know it wasn't just me. But good news. Emily Forlini is here. Senior editor at senior reporter at PC magazine. It's always great to see Emily. You see her every month on Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent and she does a weekly show with Mike Elgin all about AI. Hi, Emily.
C
Hello. Glad to be here. Sad for Paris. I hope you're feeling better, Paris, if you happen to watch this. But it is nice to be here.
A
Yeah. She was actually very happy to be able to get back in bed. We're going to interview Guy Kawasaki today. But unfortunately the interview which was scheduled, Jeff and I were going to pre record on Monday. Guy forgot about it because we're forgettable. So I did a little tai chi, which is apparently now on our twit feed. I'm sorry to say this, and that wasn't my intent. I was just stalling for time. Jeff and I had a nice half.
C
Hour just you didn't show us some moves. Like what? Go ahead.
B
For the audience today. Do a few moves. Do a few moves.
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I do. I do it every morning. I do. I love. I love tai chi. I recommend it for.
B
It was one of the silly. Name one of. One of the. One of the.
A
It's Yang long form. Thank you. Baskin ramen and 108 moves. It is a. If you do it right, it's a half an hour. But I haven't learned all three sections yet. I've only learned the first two, and I'm just getting the second one down. There's a lot of moves.
C
What if you do it wrong?
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If you do it wrong, My teacher says that you should just say that's how they do it in Yangtze Province. No one will know the difference. He says it's right somewhere. Although I feel. I felt very bad on our last class. Somehow I was in front of the room and I left out like a whole section. I just moved on and everybody followed me. And then at the end, the guy said. Teacher said, yeah, you know, you left out. I said, oh, I'm so embarrassed. But I actually. Steve Martin told me once that when he and Robin Williams were doing Waiting for Godot on Broadway, which is a notoriously hard show to do because it repeats, at one point, Robin skipped a whole scene, a whole act, and jumped to the third act. And then they realized, and they. He said, we looked at each other and we went. And nobody noticed. It was just a little shorter that night than usual. And that's if. If, you know, Waiting for Godot, you could see how that would happen. So, anyway, I don't feel. I don't feel that bad. I didn't miss. I wasn't. Wasn't playing to a Broadway audience when I did it. So no interview today. That's okay, though, because there's a lot of news and a lot of things to talk about.
B
Fresh perspective here.
A
The big news, bro, on Sunday in the middle of Twit. So I didn't really get to talk about it. We hadn't prepared, but the creator of Openclaw, the Austrian Peter Steinbecker, took a job. He was wooed, as you might imagine. Now, let me. If you watch this show, you know about Openclaw, it was originally Claude. What was Open Claude? What was it originally Claude Bot. It was originally Claud C L A W as in lobster claw, but because it used, you know, Anthropic's claw as one of its models, the folks at Anthropic were not Too happy. They wrote him a letter. He said it was a nice letter initially and so he renamed it Moltbot. He said about 5am in A. Because lobster is molt fever and the lobsters lose their shell. Right. And that lasted about a month, a week? No, not even that, A day. And it became open claw, which actually is okay. And what it is, is, is it's just a bunch of instructions for an AI that keep it running all the time and give it the ability to hook into a variety of things like messaging apps, your calendar, your email. And a lot of people have gone crazy with it. It was the most popular GitHub repo with the last time I saw it, 185,000 stars, which is a vast. You give it a star if you are happy, you think this is great or it's a vote. It's a like, basically. Let me just see what. Open 209,000. 209,000. Nobody's ever had anything like that on GitHub. So hugely popular.
C
Good for GitHub.
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Yeah. Yes, it is. You know what? All of this AI is very good for GitHub.
C
Yeah. Like stack overflow has kind of gone the opposite direction. Just kind of dried up and gone extinct. But GitHub, I mean, it's. Look at. It stays in the press, it's hitting new highs.
A
Actually, it's funny because Openclaw was good not just for Microsoft's GitHub, but it was also very good for Apple because. Well, for an interesting reason. It's so potentially so dangerous that people are afraid to run it on their regular computer. People were running out buying Mac Minis just to run it. A Mac Mini is kind of the perfect machine. It didn't run anywhere. I've run it on a Linux box. It run anywhere. But Mac Minis are kind of like the perfect machine to run it. It's cheap. People were running out, in fact, so much so that Apple is out of stock. If you wanted to get a Mac Mini today, it'd take you a month or to get it. So OpenClaw has been very, as they say, been very, very good for Microsoft's GitHub and for Apple. But now we can safely say it's been very, very good. For Peter Steinberg, its creator, he has been wooed, he said, by venture capitalists, by meta, by OpenAI. I imagine many, many others saying, Peter, Peter, Peter, come to work for us. He said the only thing he said he did, somebody said, did you hear from Anthropic, another beneficiary of this because most people use it with Claude. Claude code. He said, the only thing I've ever gotten from Anthropic was legal letters. So that's not good. Apparently Meta offered him more money even.
B
Than OpenAI and Zuck himself was wooing him.
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Well, and. And you know about the check suck rights, right?
B
Yeah.
C
Right.
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Probably hundreds of millions of dollars.
C
It's just funny because the last interview I saw with him, he was on that podcast, tbpn.
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Yep.
C
He just openly said, I already have a ton of money, you know.
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Oh, yeah, he's a startup.
C
He considers himself very wealthy.
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Yeah.
C
So now, I mean, this could be a good kind of rags to riches independent developer. Post something on GitHub, it goes crazy. It's not that. Don't be m. No.
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In fact, the story is he sold his startup for so much money, he took three years off and didn't do anything. And then not long ago, just about six months ago, said, let's try some of this vibe coding stuff, man. And created Open Claw.
C
He said he was in retirement. His Twitter bio said it was. I came out of retirement to build this. So he was set. He thought he was good for life. Now he's working at OpenAI, which is a real twist for him. But, you know, he was already good.
A
Financially, so he said his 40s. Look at him. He's not. He's not too old.
C
40S.
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Yeah.
C
Look at that guy.
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He's a happy man. Deep in vibe coding mode, tinkering with shiny webtech.
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Chasing Australian accent.
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He doesn't have a strong accent.
B
Oh, he does.
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He's kind of quiet, actually. He's done a lot of interviews.
B
We.
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We should probably get him on. After I saw him on TN tpnb, I didn't rush to get him on because he was so kind of laconic. He was kind of quiet and didn't say a lot, so I thought, well, it won't be a great interview, but no, his English is very good. He lives in London as well as Vienna.
B
Well, he's from Australia.
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He's Australian, not Austrian.
C
Austrian Australia.
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Oh, that's what.
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Yeah, there is a difference, Jeff.
B
That's why I was waiting. Leo's bad Australian accent. Okay.
C
Yeah, that would be very off.
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No, he talks like this. So he. I think the money did not motivate him, obviously. Mark, they said outbid Sam Altman when.
B
He said he wanted it to run independently.
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That's what I think. Sam Altman offered him. And so openclaw is now in a. Its own open source thing. I don't know what you would call it, but it's out of the reach of anybody. There's a community around it. It will continue to proceed. Then he gets to work at OpenAI. So I guess maybe he liked the idea that they didn't want to assume ownership, that they would support the project with money, he says, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach. He said, we share the same vision, the community around Openclaw, something magical. And OpenAI has made strong commitments to. To enable me to dedicate my time to it and already sponsors the project. I'm working to make it a foundation. It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers and people that want a way to own their own data. The irony of all of this is in about five minutes, Openclaw will be so yesterday.
C
Oh, yeah, I think OpenAI just is trying to. To kill it, but they really got him with that recruiting pitch.
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I don't know if they're going to kill it. I.
C
Well, they don't want him to spin up his own company because they tried to do their AI browser and it kind of has not taken off. And then he just thought of agents in a different way and they were. I think they were a little nervous because they were the hottest thing since ChatGPT came out.
A
It's pretty. To me, it's pretty clear what the lesson of openclaw is. That. And many have said this, this is the year of agentic AI, where.
C
In.
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My opinion, I think, I don't know, you can tell me I'm wrong. The chatbots are kind of not a great way to see what AI can do. This is the commercial product. It's certainly what OpenAI has been pushing. It's what GROK is all about. Anthropic kind of went a different way. They said, you know what, they have a chatbot. But we really want to make tools for coders. And that's where my eyes were open. That's where it really succeeds. And I think that that's why OpenClaw is so interesting, because it takes that and then turns it into something that you do chat with. You know, you could put it in Discord or Telegram. Most people seem to put it in Telegram, but it can work with Apple's messages and any, you know, almost any chat platform that's not completely shut up and you talk to it, but it then goes off and codes in the back, you know, does stuff in the background, goes through your emails, looks at your calendar and stuff.
B
It's Actionable.
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That's agent. Yeah, it's an agent. And it works 247 on your behalf. A lot of people have likened it to having a personal assistant working for them. Maybe not the smartest personal assistant. Here's a question, maybe even not the most honest personal assistant, but was it.
B
A mistake to introduce LLMs to the world as chat? Did that lead to all kinds of problems about, oh, my God, it can do this and it can.
A
That's interesting.
B
Brainwash us. It hallucinates if it. The problem is, if it had been interested in the world as what you're working on, Leo, it still required a higher level of skill.
A
Yeah, you know, I. Six months ago I started. I mean, I've been playing with Open with Claude code since it came out, which is about almost exactly a year ago. And one of the first things I tried to do, I don't know if you remember this, Jeff, is write an app for Twit that would let you subscribe to the podcast, listen to them, watch the podcast, you know, podcast app. And it really got stalled out on the API, on the Twitter API. It just. I had the hardest. It was struggle. It was a struggle. No, that's not right. No, that's not right. No, you got the. Yes. Monday, I sat down with a much later version of Claude code in Opus 4.6 and it did everything fine. It understood it. It did. It did a great job. It was like a night and day. So, Eve. Yes, to answer your question, I think the chat interface isn't a great way to use these, but even then it was. Also, the models weren't as good. The models got really good recently. And this is true, by the way of OpenAI's chat.
B
Well, they got really good. I think it might be true with certain things versus other things. They got really good at coding and programming and aging.
A
Although, you know, the latest thing Anthropic did is a plugin for Excel, which is kind of really good. Like, really good. And so that's kind of still a kind of coding.
B
Yeah.
A
But I think this is. And actually this is the real question is, you know, is it going to be. I. It was sort of my contention that, well, this is the first thing. If you can get the AI to do code, then it can write its own code, then it can get better, and then you can get better at everything else. Not sure if that's true. It may never get better at, you know, images or movies or writing. I mean, there's evidence it is, but maybe it'll never be up to snuff.
C
Well, it is true that it's definitely a big AI coding moment right now.
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Yes.
C
And I think that makes sense for us to focus on that. And you see OpenAI kind of trying to narrow in that direction. Whereas before it was all about image and video and they were kind of proving that AI could do everything and then talk about how it was going to automate everything. Now this week they just want to compete with Anthropic.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Well, now remember, OpenAI has Jony. I've working on some piece of hardware this week. Apple.
C
It's a bit of an eye roll for me.
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Well, maybe Apple has also. Apparently this is a rumor, but Mark Gurman says Apple is working really hard to release this year or next. Glasses. Three kinds of agentic AI hardware pieces. Glasses, earbuds and a pendant. They're looking at a pendant pin.
C
I want a brooch with rhinestones.
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Yeah. Flashing Apple. I think it will be a fashion statement. Sure. But there's no point in that hardware. We saw the humane pin. We saw the little R1. There's no point in the hardware if the software doesn't do anything you need it to do. So you've got to have this. But you need an interface to an agentic AI as well. And I think something that a wearable makes a lot of sense. So I think OpenAI knows that and that's why they hired. They gave Jony I've 6 billion. Apple knows that's why they're working as fast as they can. They don't want the iPhone to become a. Has been Anthropic's not interestingly, Anthropic's just.
B
Kind of anthropic's more B2B staying. I'm curious to hear your views on this, Emily. I think Anthropic is succeeding and is pushing more toward what I would consider B2B and technology users rather than trying to be retail everybody totally.
C
And they were the first ones, I think to do that. And it is interesting because their president came from OpenAI and his sister, so they both run Anthropic. They came from OpenAI and they were I think among the first to draw lines in the sand of we're not going to do this and we're going to do that. So a good example is they don't do image generation, which a lot of people don't know on Claude. Yeah. So they narrowed early. They were like, this is going to be a thing for work. We're going to do this for workplaces. We're going to get enterprise contracts, very important. Pissing off Microsoft and they're just going accelerating in it. And now OpenAI is, I think, thinking to itself, shoot, we should have done that.
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Meanwhile, OpenAI has disbanded its mission alignment team.
B
Mission schmission.
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Mission schmission, whatever that is. And they were created, let's not forget the whole point of OpenAI. This was Sam Altman and Elon Musk created this so that the big guys wouldn't own AI, that it would be open to the public, to everybody. And, well, that mission's long gone. They weren't actually that long around. They were formed in September 2024. According to Platformer, they were dedicated to promoting the company's stated mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Forget about it. The, the former head of IT is now the company's chief futurist. He says, my goal is to support OpenAI's mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity by studying how the world will change in response to it.
C
Just such a conflict of interest, you know, because they keep saying it's going to automate jobs, but they want that to happen. Right. Because that means people are using their platform and they're making money. So I just don't see inherently how, how those two missions can work together.
B
Yeah, I think your point, Emily, is even bigger, is that OpenAI, it goes back to what you said, Anthropic, they, they put boundaries down and said, this is our strategy, this is what we're doing. I think what it really exposes about Open anthropic did that. OpenAI has just been this, this idea that we're going to be everything AGI, it's going to do everything you can ever imagine in all the world. Means they had no strategy. They grabbed onto things, they tried to wow people a piece at a time and we'll have the next model and it can do this or that. I don't think they've ever had a clear strategy. Google, I think, has a clearer strategy. Microsoft hasn't had a clear strategy. Perplexity doesn't really matter.
C
What happened to perplexity?
B
Yeah, boy, they were the hot PR story, weren't they?
C
I think Amazon bid to buy them or somebody bid to buy them, and now I just haven't heard about them in a long time.
A
So in my opinion, the story there was they were always a bridge technology. What perplexity does is they orchestrate multiple other people's models. They don't do models themselves. They, they give you access to them and you can do search with them and stuff. And it was. But this is the problem right now. This stuff's moving so fast that you can't just put a pin in and say, we're going to do that because five minutes later, nobody needs that anymore. We're going to do. You need to do that. And that's what happened to Perplexity. All of these models do what Perplexity did. I mean, they did innovative things.
B
They were. The first was going to do a browser. They were the first one to get a browser out.
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Interestingly, they put ads in a year or so ago and then took them out. Said, you know what? People can't trust us if you put ads in.
C
Interesting. I didn't know they did that.
A
Yeah. So they don't do ads anymore. Guess who does ads.
C
I saw my first one. Have you guys did you did.
B
Oh, haven't seen.
A
Tell us about that because we don't know.
C
Screenshot, man. It was huge.
A
It was.
C
Yeah.
A
So was it related to the search you were performing or the conversation?
C
It was very loosely related. It was. I was asking something because I've been using AI a lot for design and creative stuff, just as I've been like renovating this house and stuff. And so it was something related to that. And then it was just a Canva ad. Like I was talking about something just very loosely design related. And then it was Canva. It took up almost my whole screen, which I thought was crazy because Sam Altman for years has been saying, oh, they're going to be so integrated. He always talks about how he loves Instagram ads because they're just part of his feed. They're exactly what he wants. He wants to buy that tchotchke. And then I saw this Canva ad and I was like, what the heck, man? What have you been saying?
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Remember how Matty got over anthropic super bowl ad implying, I don't know if.
C
You guys can see. How do I do this?
A
Yeah, let's see.
C
Okay. This is my phone. This is a screenshot. I was talking. It's like, I can't get on the camera.
A
It's right in the middle of the conversation. Right.
C
So I went to type something and I can't even see the previous conversation. See how my keyboard's up?
A
Yeah.
C
And all I can see is Canva sponsored touch up photos fast. I wasn't talking about touching up photos. Like, I did not want to see this. And then there's a large disclaimer as to how influence the Answers you get from ChatGPT.
B
There's no answer.
C
Yeah. So it was very disruptive and I was not impressed.
B
Huh.
A
Wow. Well, we're going to do a disruptive ad in a moment, so. Hang on, hang on. Simon Willison did a diff. Between OpenAI's mission statement before and after and what they've taken out is this line. We're trying to build AI as part of a larger community and we want to openly share our plans and capabilities along the way. Gone. That's gone. The rest of it's basically the same, but that part is gone.
C
Not surprised.
A
Yeah.
B
So Scooter X just put a story in. In the. In the discord said canva gets to $4 billion in revenue as LLM referral traffic rises.
A
Yeah, those ads work.
B
So it's really.
C
I haven't seen another one, though. What's up with that? You know, like.
A
Well, that's why it's not as well targeted, because they probably don't have as many advertisers yet. Right. It'll get more targeted as they get more advertisers. Once they get somebody who's specializing in using AI to remodel your home. That's the ad.
B
That's the AdSense brought in an entirely new population of advertisers that didn't operate by the old rules. The old advertisers followed them.
C
If I was an advertiser, I'd be all over it. I'd be like, yeah.
A
Google search ads were so amazingly effective because they were tied to your interests.
C
Mm.
A
They're incredibly effective. And now look at trying to figure.
B
Out, you know, how to advertise to agents.
A
Yeah.
C
Right. I wonder if anyone listening works in advertising, because I feel like AI has quietly disrupted that industry, especially with Google search. You're paying for placement on Google Search, but now it's just AI overviews. No one sees your ad.
A
Yep. Well, look at Zoe Hitzig's opinion piece in the New York Times. She worked at Facebook, went to OpenAI. OpenAI is making the mistakes Facebook made. I quit.
B
Having cashed out a lot of stock. I don't doubt.
A
She says, I don't believe ads are immoral or unethical. AI is expensive to run. Ads can be a critical source of revenue. But I have deep reservations about OpenAI's strategy. Part of the reason she doesn't like it, and this makes sense, is that you have been sharing. Maybe not me, but maybe some people have been sharing their deepest, innermost secrets with ChatGPT. And OpenAI has records of all of that. And she says advertising built on all that information creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don't have the tools to understand, let alone prevent. And I see what she's saying. It makes a lot of sense. She says the erosion of OpenAI's principles to maximize engagement may already be underway. It's been reported the company already optimizes for daily active users anyway. Probably by encouraging the model to be more flattering and sycophantic. Right.
C
Is it still a non profit OpenAI or are they restructuring?
A
Yes, it is. Technically.
B
They've been trying to owned by, controlled by. But the company itself is a for profit.
A
Yeah. And they did make successfully. Have they been able to split? I don't know. Elon's suing them over it.
C
That's the core issue here. Because if they were a nonprofit they wouldn't have, you know, these profit incentives to do all these things. So they must not be a full nonprofit. They must have, they must have switched. Right?
B
Yeah. And, and, and in their culture they never have been either. So.
C
Yeah, yeah. That ship sailed. When they, they ousted Sam Altman from the board and then brought him back. They were like pretty much they picked their lane. Yeah.
B
They realized that their, their strategy. They do have a strategy. It's scale, full stop.
C
Right.
B
Scalability.
A
OpenAI did. This was also a new model week. We'll talk about Anthropic's new model in just a second. But OpenAI just released a hardware based model chat GPT 5.3 Codex Spark that's designed to work on a dinner plate sized chip.
B
I want to see a picture of it.
A
Let me see if I have. I can find a picture. This is Simon Willison showing you. His test of AIs is whether it can draw SVG, a scalable vector graphic of a pelican riding a bike. And he says it's pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.
C
We should all get dinner plates and just eat chips off them. What kind of chips would you guys eat? Are you like a sour cream and onion? Are you?
A
I'm a kind of salt and vinegar.
B
Kind of salt and vinegar.
C
You guys are very salt and vinegary. I also like salt and vinegar. Vinegar.
A
It fits well. You welcome to the show.
C
So we can get plates of salt and vinegar chips.
A
We'll fit right in. I'll tell you why I think it's interesting that they're doing this. If you're going to do an agent, if you're going to do a pin, a rhinestone encrusted Brooch, you do earbuds or glasses, you got to have fast, responsive hardware and it's got to be small and portable. So it makes sense that they'd be working along these lines. That's it seems to me Anthropic. Also put out a new model which I've been playing with. Two weeks after they released Opus 4:6, they've released Sonnet 4:6.
B
Remind us the difference between Sonnet and Opus.
A
Yeah, Opus is the highest end model, Sonnet's the mid size, the mid range model, and Haiku is their cheap model. Both in all three cases, it's in terms of intelligence but also cost. Right. So for instance, the summaries that I generate in our show rundowns that I present, the briefing book I make for you guys, those are done not by Opus or even by Sonnet, but by Haiku because Haiku's sufficient and it's cheap. It's 25 cents a week for all of those summaries that I generate.
C
It's cool that you do that, that you know all this. I mean, not many people know what Sonnet, Opus and Haiku are up in the center.
A
Oh, this is part of. This is part of what he does, what I do. Baby. I love this stuff. I love it. So one of the interesting pieces that they added though, when they released 4 6. So 4 6, they're not really forthright. I've seen a lot of speculation about what Sonnet is in relation to Opus. It seems to be they're essentially similar models but slightly modified to be less expensive. There were stories that Sonnet 46 was gonna. The Opus 46 was gonna be Sonnet 5. And then it was so good, they said, well, we'll call this opus 4:6. So it's not. It's not really clear. It's kind of like when a chip maker makes the same chip, but part of it doesn't work, so they bin it, they chew and they. And they make a lower end laptop with a lower end, the broken chip and higher end. And every chip maker does this. I think this is kind of similar to that.
B
Hi.
D
This is one of them eats all the tokens. That's what I know.
A
Well, I'm going to tell you about that in a second.
C
It's actually kind of like WI fi plans. You know, you're getting WI fi for your house. You're like, how many bits or megabytes do I need? You never know. So you're just like, oh, maybe I'll just pay for the maximum plan. The new Fiber optic though, whatever. That's like Claude's $200 a month plan. Do you think you need that to do something? Like you made the rundown, so you just start paying and then you realize, oh, actually I need half of that, a quarter of that. Yeah, yeah, but know how much you need. So it just depends basically how much money you have and how excited you are about.
A
So this is when you're in Claude code, you can, you can choose the model. These are the, the choices. But notice there's something. You could choose Sonnet 46, but there's also Sonnet 46 with 1 million token context, and that is build at a higher cost. $22.5 per million tokens. If you want to get Opus 4.6 with a million context, that's 3,750 per million tokens.
C
Who's the customer, do you think?
A
Looking at, well, developers. So they also, when they released 4.6opus, they offered a fast mode which you turn on. It costs twice as. Actually, I think it costs six times as much in tokens. But it's faster. It's for people with lots of money who are in a hurry. It's very much.
C
That's what I'm saying. It just depends how much.
A
It's not smarter, it's not better, it's just faster. Right.
C
You just don't care. You just want to.
A
All of the stuff I've been doing, I've been doing since November 24th was with Opus 4. 6. One of the. We've talked about this on the show before. One of the things that happens to a model context is, you know, it loads in your papers, Jeff, and your instructions and the various instructions you've set up for it and stuff. And it starts to fill up. It's like it's memory. It's basically, it's memory. It fills up when your context gets mostly full. That's when AI start to hallucinate. That's when they start to act silly.
C
Okay.
A
So it's always a little bit of a struggle as you're working to keep your context from getting to more than 80%. Past 80%, it's unreliable. So in the process of working with it, you will compact it. And in the process of compacting it, you will say, hey, make some notes about what this conversation. Because it's going to, by the way, when you clear the context, it starts over, forgets everything. It's done. So you say to it, I'm thinking.
C
Of a drinking metaphor. I'm like, it's drinking too Much. It's getting to the end of the night, it's getting loopy. And you go to bed, Just go to bed. Let's start over tomorrow.
A
What you typically will do is say, make notes about what we've done so far. Save those because I'm going to clear the context. And when you clear the context, then it reloads those notes. So it's like memento. You know how he was always making the post it notes for himself when he waked up? Your name is John. It's like that. It wakes up with nothing.
C
Sounds nice.
A
So if you have. Yeah. For some people. So I can't remember what the context is it 128,000 tokens. I can't remember what the context is normally. But a million token context is vast. That is, Jeff, you could get every one of your scientific papers in there and, and, and, and go. And it would have them in, in effect in a RAM and have them in its memory. So that's why it's more expensive. But in theory it would be also more effective. So I'm going to play with a million. I've set up. I've started to use the sonnet million instead of the opus million.
B
Now does that, does that cost you in addition to your 250month?
A
Yeah. Yeah. So Sciface says the standard context is 200,000. So it's five times more context. That's a significant jump. Yeah.
C
Bill, does extra usage, Let us know how it is.
A
I'll let you know what the bill is.
C
Yeah.
A
More importantly, generally what I do is. So if I. Like on Monday, I coded most of the day, I used Claude code. Most of the day it was 20 bucks, but now I didn't have to pay for it because I have that max subscription. So it's in theory unlimited until I run out of tokens, which got it.
C
Don't you think they're kind of messy with the product names? You know, like after just talking about all of it, there's. Who can keep track. Who can keep track. Yeah.
A
What is opus, sonnet and haiku? Well, haiku's a poem, sonnet's a poem, opus is a work. Usually I think of it as symphonic.
B
An oeuvre.
A
An oeuvre. It's the Latin word for work. So I guess is there an opus in a poet? In poetry? Maybe these are poetry terms.
C
I don't know. Hocus pocus. I don't know.
A
Yeah, SciFace is its extra usage. It seems to be. See, it says build as extra usage. 10 bucks plus 3,750 per million tokens. So it's expensive. But I think Anthropic's saying, well, we've got these enterprises using Claude code to write their SaaS apps. If they're in a hurry or they want a more effective tool.
C
They can quantify it very easily. It's an easy business case because it's just how many software engineering heads, as they call it, am I replacing?
A
Right. So Sonet4.6 is not as in theory. Right. It's their intermediate model. Not as smart as Opus 4.6, but in some ways it's smarter. That's what's really odd. And it. And it would be cheaper. It scored. Now the problem with AI benchmarks is a lot of times these AIs are post trained on the benchmarks, so they're not reliable. But Arc AGI 2, which is supposedly an intelligence benchmark, gave Sonnet 4.6a 60% score, which puts it really ahead of almost everything except for the top of the line models from anthropic, opus 4. 6 and Gemini's three deep think, which is very smart. So it's a very. In other words, it's their mid range model and it's as smart or smarter than almost everybody else. It's important and it's apparently very good at coding. So I'm going to try it. I haven't written anything substantial, but so far I haven't been able to see a difference.
D
Quick question, Leo. Do you think that the extra charge they're charging you for that is more or less than it costs them?
A
We do not know.
C
Do they have a margin?
D
Are they losing on that still?
A
Well, they're going to go public soon. When they go public, then they'll have to report that, I think.
B
Well, there was a story I didn't put in the rundown of estimating how much they're going to be spending with Amazon and Google. Anthropic will be for the host hardware.
A
Yeah. For training.
C
Other people are cashing in. Yeah.
A
Oh yeah, it's better to be Levi's than the 49ers. So the race goes on. Anthropic apparently in trouble with the Pentagon though. This is really an interesting story. Pentagon is threatening to cut off Anthropic because Anthropic says you don't use us for. For weapons.
B
Well, that's woke.
A
Don't be woke. Says they say two areas are off limits for using Anthropic's AI models. The mass surveillance of Americans.
C
Good.
B
Anybody? I would hope. Anybody?
A
Well, enemy's okay, but you know, you got to surveil the Chinese and rule that out.
B
You shouldn't do that. No.
A
And not, I shouldn't say weapons. Fully autonomous weaponry. In other words, weaponry that can, without human intervention, kill people. The Pentagon says, hey, you should let us use your tools for, quote, all lawful purposes and with the laws. The threat is if Anthropic doesn't play along, that the Pentagon will pull their clearance. In other words, making him a pariah in the market.
C
Such a strong arm tactic.
A
It's a big threat and it's going to be.
C
It's not a good week to do that because Anthropic has so much momentum right now. Yeah, it's not an easy power play, I think, between the two.
A
Claude. Anthropic was not happy, but the military used Claude to capture Nicholas Maduro through Palantir.
B
Well, that's the real. That's the keystone in this story.
C
Yes.
A
Yeah.
C
Yes, We.
B
We will kill your enemies. Palantir. Did you see that video of the, of the. The Palantir call? Carp going wacky. Oh. See if you can find it real quickly.
A
Tell. Give me a key. Give me Hattus. I don't know what you're talking about.
C
Give me the wacky, wackiest thing.
A
Calling to your. Call to who?
C
What is he, kind of like a bunker billionaire?
B
I got it. There's a line in there that's like crazy here.
A
Well, let me play. Can I play it?
B
Yeah, I just got it. It's in there. It's in the chat. It's in the discord.
A
Oh, Alex Karp you're talking about.
B
Yeah, Carp, Yeah.
A
Oh, my God. He says the craziest things. Let me see.
B
Get a load of this.
A
All right, this is. We played his Nutty Screeds before. Let's see. We're doing it. This is an investor call. And I'm sure you're enjoying as much as I am. The T shirts not talk to analysts about the burden of being right. Our burdens of investing in intelligence. By the way, he does Tai chi. He loves Tai chi. Does it every day.
D
It's 13 minutes long. But what he says is what.
A
What part should I play?
D
I. I don't know where he says it, but he says he gets to.
B
It about a minute. He gets to it in about a minute where he says, we kill your enemies.
D
No, sometimes we kill people and make our.
A
The institutions. We partner with the very best in the world. And when it's necessary to scare enemies and on occasion, kill them. And we. Well, of course, the Military's not around to hit people on the head and make them dizzy.
C
Yeah, I kind of agree.
B
It's a little.
C
It's a little crass, but it's true.
A
I read his book, the Technologic Republic. His position. His position is, and I'm not completely in disagreement with it, Silicon Valley went, you know, in the early days of this 20th century, technologists, scientists, inventors, worked hand in hand with the government to protect our way of life. They did the atom bomb because they were afraid Hitler was going to get an atom bomb. That was the Manhattan Project, he says. But then what happened with Silicon Valley in the 80s and 70s, 80s and 90s, is they took all that brain power and started making toys to make money like smartphones.
C
That's so sweet.
A
He said they need to get back to working in partnership with the government to preserve our democracy. To preserve our democracy. Now, he then.
B
That phone call's coming from inside the house these days, but we'll leave that aside.
C
Yeah, I don't know if this is the right time for that mission, but I agree with the premise that technological development used to feel more purposeful and it quickly became shiny toys with Silicon Valley. I agree with that. Yep.
A
Consumer economy. I'm reading the book and for the first, I don't know, six chapters, I'm going, yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he goes off the deep end, just as he did here.
D
I mean, that sounds like capitalism to me though, right? That's what capitalism is.
A
Look.
C
But we've always had capitalism. We have a different flavor of it now.
A
The Ford factory made tanks in the war in the World War II effort, the American industrial might. We won World War II because we had an amazing industrial base, and we were able to do that. And Germany did too, by the way. It was nip and tuck for a long time, but ultimately we prevailed because we were richer, larger, and had, you know, more industry. We were able to do that.
D
And then what did FDR about that whole thing?
A
Then?
D
What did FDR say about the whole military industrial complex?
B
Well, that was. That was.
A
That was Eisenhower.
B
That was, that.
D
Was that Eisenhower? Sorry.
A
So, yeah, it was later a general. So, yeah, he knew.
C
Well, what happened was there used to be the best technical talent in the government. Now, because everyone's making so much money in Silicon Valley, the best technical people are not in the government. So now the government's behind, woefully behind. They also have more regulation, of course. Silicon Valley has people who want to move really fast. They want to make A lot of money. So the missions are just different. And what each is pumping out is different. So I guess the best Pete Hegseth can do is just threaten them. So that's what he's doing.
A
Alex in the book, quotes a number of. I have my notes here somewhere from the book. Let me see if I can find it. Military thinkers and so forth. His philosophy is might makes right. That if you want to preserve your culture, your way of life, you need to be the strongest. And I'm not sure I completely disagree.
B
Well, it depends. If this is the whole Rubio Western view, white ethnocentric, then, yeah, I got problems with it. And that's. And that's what? Let's be honest. It is.
C
Yeah. I don't think might makes right. We're supposed to be moving beyond that. That's like the whole point of society.
A
Yeah, but we're not. Yeah, that's. But that's an unrealistic point of view.
C
That's why we don't murder each other. That's might makes right. What is that? The old, like, you know, locks or Hobbs or something? Social contract. We're supposed to not be doing that.
B
Yeah, it's about the era of collaboration and peace.
A
But it's realpolitik. I mean, we. I mean, let's be. He says the only thing in this, in the book that will ever prevent nations from beginning war is terror.
C
What?
A
No, he says they have to be afraid of us, but that's what preserves peace. It's that mutually assured destruction. Right.
C
I mean, let it be known I was open minded. It's only.
D
It's only the Western countries that have invaded any other countries in the last. What?
B
Yeah.
D
How long. So, like, why is he the one talking this like it's America that's been invading more countries than any other country?
B
Well, and. And the UK and. Yep.
C
Mm. Not really peace oriented.
B
Colonialism and imperialism.
D
Yeah, it's. It's colonialism. That's colonialism.
A
Yeah. Except that if your adversaries, let's say our adversaries today, are always the victim.
D
America's always the victim in the framing of this, but always America is actually.
C
The aggressor or the savior.
A
But if your adversaries are as they are today, China and Russia, they have no hesitation. We've seen it in Ukraine. We'll see it. If China invades America, no hesitation in using kinetic power to enforce.
B
Our allies in Europe are being treated as adversaries when they're our best allies.
A
Well, that's a mistake. But I don't think Alex Carter is advocating for that. He's just saying he's.
B
He's all in with that crew. Well, yeah, this is Peter Teal land. This is. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is isolationism. Put the walls up all around.
A
Well, actually.
B
And the enemy, the enemy they're talking about is five year old immigrant children. And they're using Palantir for that. I'm not trying to get too political here, but if you're talking about them portraying enemies and what to do with them and how to use this technology, they're treating immigrants as enemies.
C
So. Okay, this is such a big conversation. I'm like, what point do I want to make?
A
I. I honestly think that there. I. Look, I'm not sure I believe in it. I'm kind of more of a pacifist, in fact.
C
You just want to use Claude code at home.
A
Most humans want peace, right? I mean, really, that's what we want. We want. We want.
C
We're lazy.
A
We just want to live and let live. It's not lazy. We want to live and let live. We want a peaceful environment in which we can prosper and take care of our family and be able to feed them and all of that. People like Alex Karp say that, well, that's all well and good, but when you have adversaries who want to take you over and dominate you, you also need to have a strong military. They need to be afraid of you.
C
You can also say, why is he writing a book about it? We're not Costa Rica, which doesn't have a military. What's the point?
A
Yeah, we have a military. His point is that there are a lot of pacifists in technology companies today, like Anthropic, who don't want to engage in that, who say, well, but we don't want you to use our tools as part of your military might. They don't acknowledge the need to have a military might to protect yourself against adversaries. And he's simply arguing to them, look, I want peace. I want prosperity as much as you do. But in a world where there are adversaries, it's really important if you want to preserve the peace, to do it through strength. If you act weak, if you say, oh, no, no, we're just going to be nice hippies, they will conquer you.
B
If you also have this strength without standards and without ethics and morals and principles, then, well, that's a different.
A
I agree with you, but that's a, that's kind of a side argument.
B
I think it's the core argument.
C
I mean he can have his opinion. I just think that's one way to look at it. And there are other equally good ways to look at it. So sure, he can say we should have a military. I guess that's his point. A strong military. Sure. I don't.
A
Yeah. And that the tech.
C
That's not controversial to me, the tech.
A
Sector should work to support it, not to fight it is what he's saying. That's all he's saying.
C
Yeah, then I, But I. It doesn't mean you just comply with every government request. You talk about it, you have a nuanced discussion, which is what Anthropic is trying to do. Yeah, right.
A
I'm sympathetic. I can see why. Anthropic. I would 100% agree with anthropic that their technology not be used to surveil Americans, period. Red line.
C
Right.
A
Our military should not be used to subdue Americans. That's a red line. We've always had that red line in this country. We are defending ourselves against adversaries, not ourselves. So that I agree with. Not be used for autonomous weapons is interesting. And I think you can make the moral argument that you can go too far in this and this is the real risk. Yes, it's good to have a strong defense. It's good to have a strong military. It's not good to. That's why we have the Geneva Convention. We have to also have. It seems weird, but we seem to have. We have to have some sort of terms of engagement with our enemies.
B
So could Anthropic be. Be. If it were used in this way, Anthropic could find itself involuntarily making war crimes.
A
Right.
C
Yeah.
A
And because the risk of creating autonomous killing machines is that our enemy will create autonomous killing mach. So just as with nuclear anti proliferation, we abjure certain technologies because we don't want to escalate into the destruction of the world. So we won't do it if you don't do it. That's another part of defending our way of life. Right. So I think Anthropic is not wrong saying, well, we don't want to get involved in autonomous killing machines.
C
And just to spell that out because it is a little buzzwordy. I think he's basically saying we don't want machines that are going out there doing things on their own and actually we don't even know what they're doing.
A
Precisely. So I think there's a reasonable red line, that there should always be a human in the kill decision.
C
Right.
A
There are. People say there should never be a kill decision. That's where Alex Karp would argue. Well, there has to be. People have to be afraid of you. People have to think you're willing to kill them to defend yourself or you're a private entity making a defense.
B
If you're a private entity, is there a reasonable red line in saying that I will work with this kind of administration? Not that kind of administration.
A
Well, and this is where I think the administration has gone too far because Hegseth and the Department of War have basically said, look, you cooperate with us or we're going to make you a pariah. You will not be able to work with anybody. Any government contractor. You will be on the do not work with list. They're. They're blackmailing Anthropic.
C
It could be good for Anthropic.
B
Could be good for Anthropic. Exactly.
C
Yeah, like that's what I'm saying. I think this is a bad moment for them to threaten Anthropic because the momentum is overwhelming. They just raise another billions of dollars open. AI is shaking in their boots over Anthropic. It's not a good week.
B
They can be the Jimmy Kimmel of AI Yeah, yeah.
C
Or Stephen Colbert. I guess the. The episode with that Texas senator, I don't know who it was, is like getting more views than any other.
B
It's now up to 6.47 million views with Telorico, whereas Colbert's average regular ratings is 2.4 million people.
A
That's the strange thing.
B
That telo guy, he's running for Senate in Texas.
C
Okay, got it.
A
That's Jasmine Crockett. He's one of the deb. There's going to be a Democratic bloodbath, unfortunately, before they get to the general election.
D
Masnik's calling it the car effect now. Masnik's calling it the car effect now.
B
Car effect. I love it.
A
Good for the car. It's not the Streisand effect, it's a car effect. Wasn't it Mike Masnik who created the car?
D
Yeah, he's the one who. Streisand effect.
A
So he gets to rename it if he wants.
C
Isn't it a bit odd that someone couldn't interview a candidate for Senate on tv?
B
Well, this is this whole mishigas with the Fairness Doctrine. The exceptions have been there. It hasn't really been enforced. The fact that it wasn't enforced is what enabled right wing talk radio to exist. So on the one hand, they're benefiting from it. And now they're trying to say, no, no, no. We want to bring it back so you can interview a Democrat.
A
All right. I have to do an ad. We've gone on way too long. We will get to other stories in just a little bit. You're watching Intelligent Machines. See, it's good we didn't have a guest, isn't it?
B
Yeah, I see.
A
We will, by the way, get Guy Kawasaki on later. We've rescheduled. He's going to be on the show, I promise. You're watching Intelligent Machines. Paris has the day off. It's great to have Emily Forlini from PC magazine on with us today. Thank you, Emily, for being here. Jeff Jarvis can't get rid of me. His L2 and doing the best he can. L3. So your L2 is fine. It's just the L3.
B
Well, actually, it's crept into the L2, if you want to ask.
A
But my wife says humans are not well made. No, and I think that's pretty apparent with the Intelligent Machines cast.
D
We aren't final version yet. This isn't final version yet.
A
This is not the final version. That's right. That's right. This show brought to you today by Monarch. I love Monarch. Here's a thing, here's a thing. Let me tell you. Did you make a financial resolution for 2026? It's not unusual. The start of the year usually gets people thinking about their finances. I'm going to do better this time. I'm going to save more money. I'm going to prepare for the future. Maybe this is the year you said, I'm going to pay off my credit card debt or my student loans. Or maybe this is the year you said I'm going to start saving for buying a house, having a baby, retirement. Wouldn't it be nice to have a tool that helps you plan, project and proactively? And that's really important. Achieve that goal. Set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life. Budgeting, accounts, investments, your net worth, your future planning all together in one dashboard, on your phone or on your laptop. Feel aware of and in control of your finances this year. Now you can get 50% off your monarch subscription right now with the code image. Monarch is not your typical personal finance app. Most of those other apps are reactive, you know, oh, my God. What's going on? I've spent too much money. Monarch is not well, you could do that, but it's really built to make you proactive planning for the future so you don't get in those oh my God moments. Right. Tracking your money is so easy with some of Monarch's most popular features. They've got great, I mean, beautiful data visualizations. You know those Sankey diagrams, I love those where you have income, you know, and then there's taxes and then there's the kids and then here's what's left over savings. They, they'll do that. They also, if you like pie charts, line charts, bar charts, whatever way you want to see the visualization is important really to kind of see what's going on. You get investment tracking. I, I absolutely connect all my accounts, my investment accounts, my savings, my checking, my credit cards, my house, everything in there. So you get a visual picture of your portfolio performance. You can compare it to the, you know, other stock indexes like the s and P500. See how you're doing. Oh, I love this feature too. You get partner filters which allow individual and partner filters which allow you to share your Monarch account with your partner or your financial advisor at no extra charge. That's really nice. In fact, I've set it up now for I have never had a financial advisor. Lisa said you're getting one. Go to my guy. So I just set it up so I can so, so Bill will get that no extra charge. He could see we can look together at what's going on. And I don't means I don't have to bring in a sheaf of papers. I can just say here's my Monarch dashboard. And, and by the way, this really works. My experience has been fantastic. Here's what Monarch user said in a survey in 2025, Monarch helped them save over $200 every month on average after joining. That's good. Eight out of 10 members feel more in control of their finances of the monarch. Absolutely. Eight out of 10 members say monarch gives them a clearer picture of where their money's going. But I want to also say it's really easy to set up. It's really easy to have you just whenever you need it instead of going to 13 different places to see where you stand. You know, checking account, savings account, investment account, it's all there. It's so easy. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code im@monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch. Use the offer code. I am. Thank you monarch for your support of intelligent machines. Google has announced. So Apple is. Has an event coming up March 4th. They're probably going to announce the iPhone 17e or whatever they call S or inexpensive. Pardon me?
B
Cheap.
A
Cheap, yeah. The iPhone cheap.
B
The iPhone cheap.
A
Google is not dumb. So they said, you know what? We're going to launch our cheap version of the Pixel 10. The 10a. It's going to launch March 5th, the day before the Apple event for $499, actually. Is it? Maybe.
B
Basically they've just launched it.
A
Yeah, you can order it now, I guess. It's the tensor G4 from the Pixel 9a. So they're not really improving the processor. It's a little bit better display, faster charging. It's not, I have to say, it's not a massive improvement over Its predecessor, the 9A. The 9A. Right.
C
Are you guys Google Android? Are you blue? Are you green?
B
I live la vie to Google la vida Google.
A
I have.
B
I actually.
A
An iPhone guy. Your iPhone?
C
I'm sure I have an iPhone. Yeah.
A
But I also have.
C
Okay, wait, why Let me.
B
Oh, just, you know, you got to be.
A
Because you're in a pink jacket.
C
I got a pink jacket and an iPhone.
A
You're right. Nobody in a pink jacket uses an Android phone.
C
Okay. And you're in a chili pepper button.
A
Yeah. You know what that tells you? I use both is what that tells you.
C
It tells me it's spicy.
A
So yeah, you use both and a full wire. I didn't buy the new 10, but I have a Pixel 9 Pro XL and I just put by the way, and it was really easy to do the Privacy Forward 3rd party Android version called graphene. And I just want to say, I know a lot of our listeners use graphene. I just want to say it was incredibly easy. I had kind of put it off because I thought oh. Because I've done third party ROMs on Android phones before and it used to be a lot of work. You connect the USB port and the whole thing can be done through the web through your browser. It took no time. The whole point of GrapheneOS is it's using the open source AOSP version of Android. You don't need any Google services on it if you don't want. But you could sandboxed install the Google services in the Google Play store. But there are third party stores. I think it's. I'm liking it and I'm thinking it's good to have a non Googled phone. It's a good phone. Camera's good. I Get to still use all that stuff. If I want to use Google apps, I can. But it's Android without the Google. By the way, Paris has just texted us. Jiminy Christmas. She said steroids are amazing. So I guess she's feeling better.
C
Join us, Paris. Bring the roids.
A
She's on the roids. Anyway, to answer your question, I use both, but I mostly am an iPhone. I don't want to be an iPhone person. I'm soured on Apple, to be honest with you. I think they've gone the same way Microsoft has gone. They've become a dominant big tech player that insists on their way and locks you in. And I'm using Linux mostly on my computers and I wish I had a phone that I could use that would work nicely.
C
But I changed my assessment of your shirt. I think it means you use a foldable phone.
A
Oh, it's my foldable phone.
C
Oh, no. Am I right?
B
Yeah, you are.
A
You mean this? You mean this? Is that what you mean?
C
I am like a psychic.
A
Yes.
C
Shirts and phone usage.
A
Look at that. Doesn't that say foldable phone to you?
C
Namaste. The third eye speaks.
A
Let's see. Okay. Oh, I did mention that Google. Also speaking of Google has a new model. It's called their Deep Think. It's designed for science. And people are saying very good things about Gemini three Deep Think. I don't do science, so I have no personal opinion about it. But. Well, one of the. One of the things they've done, they're doing AI drug discovery.
B
That's got its work. Yeah, that's a spin off, right? That's. That's a new.
A
They've spun off isomorphic labs from DeepMind. They have a new system called the Isomorphic Labs drug design engine, ISO DDD. They say it's even better than Alpha Fold 3 at creating new molecules.
C
I've heard about this in relation to materials science. Yeah. Trying to find new materials. Yeah. I like that you included these. Even though I'm not sure we're able to really get deep into them. And the medical space is hard, but I do think medical uses of AI are something people are actually really excited about. It's just unclear. Is it happening? Is it good? Of course. Everyone wants the best care. It's so personal. Maybe the tech reporting should do a little bit of a better job staying on top of that stuff.
A
Well, and we're in some really interesting times because we have conflicting elements here. On the one hand, you have RFK Jr. And his health and Human Services shutting down a Lot of scientific exploration. Moderna has said we're not going to do these.
B
They just shifted on the, on the, on the flu.
A
They did. But they've also said, you know, we had Epstein Barr vaccines in process. We have a lot of interesting stuff in process, but we can't recoup our investment if we don't have a market in the United States. And since we won't have a market in the United States with the FDA turning their nose up at our stuff, we're not going to do the fundamental research. So it's not just the US that loses, it's the whole world that loses.
C
Interesting. I think that'd be much better messaging for this administration if they went in on the medical stuff because people care about that. Instead they're just like data centers. Data centers which nobody likes. That's the face of their AI policy.
B
Yeah, there was a story, and I forget which one. The papers today that the heartland religious are ganging up against AI. And the funny thing is the Democrats are playing close to be becoming anti AI, which I think is a mistake. Yeah, and, and, and, but I think you're right, Emily, that, that, that what AI means now to this administration, a lot of people is data centers and that's not popular.
C
And deals, deals, dollar signs, big money. And I, I think, yeah, I just think that's a losing strategy. And it's the whole AI conversation. Just personally I feel in the last couple months has kind of gone downhill. Just the quality.
A
Well, that's what, so that's what I mean is you have, on the one hand you have a kind of anti science government shutting down science in such a way, shutting down funding for science in such a way that we may be wounded by this for decades or forever. On the other hand you've got companies like DeepMind creating tools that can create new medications, can create new solutions. And it's almost a race between these two different forces, opposing forces. I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I think we live in interesting times.
C
I don't know. We're all just going to be on Ozempic and call it a day.
A
I am.
C
It's like the biggest new thing in science.
A
I love it. I love it. It's great. Everybody should try it. No, no, actually everybody should not try it. You should go to your physician and ask and hope that your physician.
B
I lost 21 pounds on a broken back.
A
That's another way.
B
Blood infection. So it's another method.
C
That doesn't sound healthy. It doesn't sound Good. Sounds dramatic.
A
All right, listen to this. This is why we're looking.
B
This is the twit war.
A
Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington or something? Is there something about the Trump era that, that has made this a distinctly different feel when it comes to Capitol Hill? That's one. Now this is two. So looking bigger picture, is this just, you know, the latest step in a long polarization trend, or is there something really different about the Trump era? Something. The first is NPR host David Green. The second is the voice of Google's Notebook. Lm. We've heard it many times. The podcaster let me play play it again a little bit for you here. Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington or the real person? I think that makes Capitol Hill feel distinct right now. The AI person. Do you think that's the same? No, David Green does. He's suing Google, saying, you stole my voice with.
B
And he admits he has no evidence that they trained on him.
A
Well, in fact, when we talked to, to Stephen Johnson, Stephen Johnson, who was.
B
He still is the editorial director of.
A
Notebook, he said they, in order to make those voices, they had many people come in and record not as conversational pairs.
B
They auditioned them as conversational pairs. And then when they picked the pair that had the best chemistry, they then had them record a whole bunch of stuff as the prosody. And they did that across 80 languages. And this guy comes along, I got people pissed at me on, on, on the socials because I went and I said, sorry, Leo, but radio people come in. Apart from you, you were a personality. But radio people in general try to have the voice.
A
We all sound the same.
B
Nowhere.
A
Yeah, we all sound the same.
B
And so this guy thinks that he has this magical voice. Well, listen like none other. It's a radio voice. It's no big deal.
A
So this is Willow Ramis article about this from the Washington Post. Listen to what he write. Online users have ventured numerous guesses as to who the AI podcasters voices most remember. Several have named David Green. But others have mentioned former tech podcaster Leo Laporte, now a former tech podcaster. I'm not dead yet.
C
Now I know why we're covering this story.
A
Because Leo's mentioned or the comedy podcast Armchair Expert, co hosted by Dan Dax Shackbird and Monica Padman. But the truth is, microphones, to a certain extent, audio processing, to a certain extent, and culture, yes, determine how my voice sounds. And I mean, I worked in radio for 50 years. We all sort of sound the same. I don't Know, I mean, it does sound a lot like David, but is that because they stole his voice or because he's got a standard radio voice? Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington?
B
He's a cliche.
A
Is there something about the Trump era that. See at the beginning where he's talking at a higher pitch, a little more nasally and looking broadly at this. Is this an arc that has been developed that's actually not a good radio announcer voice? But what. He shifts.
B
But it's a very NPR voice.
D
It's a very.
A
Though he's shifting a little bit of a list. Is this an arc that has been developing in Washington or something? Is there something about the Trump era that. That has made this a distinctly different. That second part, that's the trained radio voice, the Trump era that, that has made this. That's the voice Google's using. Looking bigger picture.
C
Well, what about the Scarlet? I think the Scarlett Johansson one sounded more like her.
B
Yeah.
A
And they said they didn't train on Scarlett Johansson. They even said the same actress they trained on.
C
They said the same thing like, yeah, we had actresses come in. So whether or not that makes sense, is Google's argument better or worse? Is it a playbook or is it just the truth?
A
Actually, I think the woman in Notebook LM seems just like you, Emily.
C
Hey, I'm not kidding.
A
Am I wrong?
C
I'm mad about it.
A
You should sue.
C
I should get in the Washington Post.
A
Doesn't it kind of sound like the.
B
Post just accepted this as an angle for story like, oh, my God, they stole. They stole.
A
Well, it is a story because there is a lawsuit.
B
We had the. Well, but, but he admits that he doesn't have evidence of it. We have Stephen Johnson on the record months ago.
A
Don't say that. I don't want to get subpoenaed.
B
Well, the transcript's already out, so, I.
C
Mean, I think it's an interesting issue. It probably just the way they covered it. They, they implied that there was foul play. Maybe that was a problem.
A
So you have, Emily, you have a classic female radio voice you had.
C
Do I?
A
Yes, it's a lower.
C
I have no training vocally or acting. Not that artsy.
A
Nor do I, but you know, you're in a lower nasal. You're not throaty.
B
You don't do up speak. You, you know, you, you, you.
C
Great.
B
No, no, you've got another career here. Radio's dying. I hate to tell you, but you could get a radio career.
A
Let me just see.
C
Thanks.
A
You know, we hear them every Single day. But have you ever stopped to think about behind the loudspeaker?
B
It sounds like not everybody.
A
It's actually this. It's. It's the NPR voice journey of a young Danish immigrant who was supposed to spend. I want to see if I get the female voice on this. This was it the very first time. This does sound just like David had.
B
Been elected, but David Green sounds like tons of people. It's. It's spacious as hell.
A
We'll see. That'd be great.
B
I got. David Gura got mad at me because of this online, you know, because he's defending him. And this is very distinctive, and I know what his voice is and all that. No, it's not. He doesn't own the radio voice.
A
Well, as what? As Will arena wrote in the Washington Post, it could be former tech podcaster Leo laporte for all we know.
C
Well, not everybody has a distinctive voice like, you know, Fran Drescher. She does.
A
If it were. If it sounded like that, then that would be okay. You would say, all right, it's Fran Drescher.
C
Yeah, well, that's true.
A
That's really true. Can you do Fran?
C
No. And also, Mike just changed different input, so I got an excuse.
A
Uh.
B
Oh, now she's in the echo chamber.
A
So Google. Let's take a break, and then I will do some more Google. More, more Google in just a little bit. You're watching Intelligent Machines with Emily Forlaney, formerly Dry Belbus. People might say, wait a minute, isn't that Emily Her. That was her maiden name, right?
C
It's my middle name now. Still around.
A
Middle name now. Can I do you. Did you hyphenate or just made it your middle name?
C
Oh, God, no. I mean, you can't hyphenate that name.
A
Emily Dracula Swellini is a lot of levels. I ADM it is.
C
But hyphenating, that's a true curse. It wouldn't fit on any form.
A
Yeah, no, no, Forlini's nice. It's a nice Italian name. I like it.
C
Thank you.
A
And yes, it's so nice to see you. Thank you for being here. Also, Jeff Jarvis. That's his real name. It's hard to believe.
B
Well, actually. Actually, no. If my great grandfather had made my great grandmother an honest woman, as they said in the day, my name would be Ryan.
A
Oh, so you have your great grandmother's name.
B
My great grandmother was made with child by a traveling salt miner from Buffalo.
A
At least she knew his name.
C
I always knew you were a gypsy.
B
Well, and so. Well, but here's the thing. So my parents. This is a great, great family shame. And there came this moment, my mother said, my father, Daryl, it's time you tell them. My sister and I are thinking.
A
So you're saying this all began with a traveling salt salesman from Buffalo?
B
No, a salt miner from Buffalo. And he's in West Virginia. And great grandma gets pregnant. And so then her son, my grandfather.
A
Can we say itinerant salt miner instead?
B
Yes. So her son, my grandfather, is raised by his grandmother as if she is the mother. And his mother is Aunt Ethel.
A
Aunt Ethel, the itinerant salt miner from Buffalo.
C
I didn't expect Aunt Ethel to be the punchline of that story. Who is Anna?
B
And Ethel was the mother. Was the mother, but she didn't act as the mother because that's the time. It was a great shame. So she. It was. She didn't acknowledge her parenthood. The grandmother claimed parenthood. And so this went. We didn't know. My grandmother, who married my grandfather, was so ashamed of this. There were love letters from the two.
A
Oh.
B
She destroyed. So we had no record.
A
Oh. So this wasn't just itinerant salt miner from Buffalo.
B
There was something through something going on.
A
There was a relationship.
B
Well, but he was. We found out he was. So then my daughter went through the whole 23andMe and. And all the other stuff, and she discovered the father. Before my father died. We got to show him pictures.
A
Wow.
B
That's my grandfather, which was pretty cool.
C
This is good family lore.
B
Yeah.
A
I'm not sure I follow it, which is often the case with family lore.
B
More my stories.
C
He had to be there. Yeah, it's complicated.
A
Can you have a nano banana, create a little chart for us, please? That would be nice.
B
So. So. I'm Jeff Ryan.
A
Okay. Jeff Ryan. Jeff Johnson.
B
I'm sorry. No, no, I'm wrong. Riley. Riley. Right.
C
Oh, my.
A
Now it doesn't even know his name.
B
I don't even know my name.
A
So the itinerant salt miner from Buffalo named Riley. Riley was your great grandfather.
B
Biological grandfather. My great.
A
But who raised your great grandfather?
B
His. His mother. His grandmother. And Ethel was the mother, but she was called his aunt.
A
Ah.
C
I'm gonna be honest. So fully lost.
A
Very noble mother in law.
B
No, no. The mother of the. Of the mother.
A
Which. Who would have been the mother in law of the itinerant salt minor football. Had they tied the knot. But they did not.
B
They did not.
A
Hence, not the great family shame.
B
Yes, exactly.
C
All right. Show title. Aunt Ethel.
A
Actually, I was going to use the itinerant salt miner. From Buffalo. Buffalo Banana.
C
I could tell you like that. You were like, yeah, trying to.
A
Trying to.
B
Who knew there was salt mining in Buffalo? By the way, There is a lot.
C
I have to admit, I didn't think of that point during this.
B
I just found out we're going to go through another rabbit hole here. Another mine here. There was a mining community in New Jersey that mined fluorescent materials. And you could go into the mine these days and they turn off the. Though there's no lights there, but they turn on black lights and everything glows different.
A
Is it phosphorus?
B
I guess so. I don't know.
A
Must be highly poisonous.
B
A professor at Montclair State is doing a class about it.
A
Wow. Okay.
B
That's in my neighborhood here in Jersey.
A
Oh, you're in New Jersey. That's right. I forgot.
C
Yeah, right.
B
Hello.
A
Both of these guys are in New Jersey. That explains a lot.
C
Gotta get on our level. That's what that means.
A
All right. Everything's legal in Jersey. We're going to take a break. We will come back with more. How you doing? In just a little bit. Our show today, brought to you by Bitwarden, the trusted leader in passwords, pass keys, love pass keys, and secrets management. Bitwarden is consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2 and software reviews, with over 10 million users across 180 countries and more than 50,000 businesses, too. One of the things I love about Bit Warden, because it's open source, I think they're always improving things. They're always getting better. They always want to make things better. So there's always new features. I mentioned passkeys. They've made this so easy now. I used to do pass keys on my phone, but then I had to have my phone with me, right? And then would say, okay, scan this QR code. But now I have Bit Warden on every device. So I just saved the passkey in Bit Warden. It makes it so easy. I don't have to type anything. I just click the button and it's there. Bitwarden pops up, says, here's the passkey you're in. Whether you're protecting one account or thousands, Bit Warden keeps you secure all year long. And with all sorts of great features like the new oh for business. This is great. The new Bit Warden access intelligence. One of the biggest problems in business these days, your employees. I know you're not, but your employees are terrible with their password hygiene. They use weak passwords like, you know, monkey, 1, 2, 3. They use the same password again and again and again. And oftentimes That's a problem because if that password is exposed in a data breach, which happens all the time, right? Bad guys just go around and try it everywhere, maybe even in your VPN and your network and suddenly you're compromised just because of your employee.
B
You.
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So you need Bit Warden's access intelligence for enterprise. It could detect weak, reused or exposed credentials. But the best part is it immediately guides remediation, actually gets the employee to replace the risky password with a strong unique one generated by Bit Warden. And that closes a major security hole. Credentials are, I think, the top cause of breaches, certainly one of the top causes. But with access intelligence from Bitwarden they become visible, prioritized and corrected before exploitation can happen. They also okay, so that's for enterprise. But don't worry, we regular users get the benefits too. Bitwarden Lite, for instance, brand new, delivers a lightweight self hosted password manager. It's built for people with home labs. They want to do little personal projects, environments that want quick setup with minimal overhead. If you are using AI, agentic AI. If you're doing openclaw, you're going to love Bitwarden's MCP server, which keeps your credentials private, secure and on your device, and still gives your agent the opportunity to go out and see the world. Bitwarden is now enhanced with real time vault health alerts. That's how you'll know if your password's been exposed in a breach and if it has been. Like with the access intelligence, it'll walk you through the process of replacing the exposed credentials to strengthen your security. Oh, I know one other thing I love about Bit Warden. A lot of people use their browser as their password manager. That's not perfect, right? Because your browser isn't everywhere and some of these browsers don't have the best security. Well, Bitwarden now supports direct import from your browser, so if you're using Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi, direct import will copy import your credentials directly from the browser into Bit Warden's encrypted vault without that separate export step, which always makes me nervous because then you've got a plain text file on your computer with all your passwords. That simplifies migration and helps reduce exposure associated with that manual export and deletion step. G2 winner 25 reports Bitwarden continues to hold strong as number one in every enterprise category. Not just for one quarter, but for six straight quarters. Bitwarden setup is easy, supports importing for most password management solutions, and the Bit Warden open source code is regularly audited by third party experts. It meets SoC2 type 2 GDPR, HIPAA CCPA compliance. It's ISO 2700-12002 certified. So get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan. Get started for free across all devices as an individual user. Bitwarden.com TWIT bitwarden.com TWIT yeah, a free password manager. That's really good. That really works. I actually pay the $20 a year just to support them. You don't have to. Bitwarden. Yes, I said a year. $20 a year. Bitwarden.com twit that's for the premium, but you don't need it. Bitwarden.com twIt thank you Bitwarden for all you do for us. So I think we'd all agree that Gemini's Nano Banana is the best image generator, right? By far. I would say.
C
Recently I'm not liking it.
A
What?
C
Yeah.
A
What's it doing wrong?
C
It's not producing.
A
Are you using it for your home design?
C
I use it for the dumbest reason.
A
You should be using Canva.
C
I should be using Canva? Yes. Yeah. No, recently I've been asking it to modify images and it's just regurgitating back the image I uploaded. Like it's not useful. It's just like it's giving me my image back. It's very weird. That's happened twice in the past three weeks.
A
I see this on Reddit all the time where people saying it's nerfed. We're not just it. Any. Any perplexity. Gemini Chat GPT. Oh, they've nerfed it. It's. They've dumbed it down. Too many people are using it. Maybe it has been.
C
I don't know, maybe I'm nerfed. Like I'm just getting. I'm getting back the same photo I uploaded. I'm like, did I do something wrong?
A
That does. That doesn't feel right, does it?
C
Yeah, but obviously I know how to create an AI image. I have no problems whatsoever on other platforms. But just ChatGPT has stricter limits. So, you know, sometimes you find yourself on Gemini, right, And you're near all of a sudden.
A
So if you had your druthers, which you'd use chat GBT instead.
C
Yeah, I just have a much, much better hit rate with it, you know?
A
Huh.
B
So is Sea Dance the new thing?
A
Well, yeah. I was going to talk about Lyria first and then we'll talk about CDAD. So these are new all new models. Lyria 3 is the newest from Google. This creates 30 second music. Well, I mean, Suno does a great.
B
Job with generation get taken down for playing it.
A
So Lyria 3 improves on audio generation. This is from the Google Keyword blog in three important ways. No need to provide your own lyrics. They'll be generated for you based on your prompt. You have more creative control over elements like style, vocals and tempo. You can create more realistic and musically complex tracks. Here's a 30 second track. Oh, and then it uses Nano banana to make album art. Here's a 30 second track called Sweet like plantain. Okay, fine.
C
No elevator music.
A
It's elevator music.
C
AI music is not likable. Right, AI?
A
I don't know. I. I use. I do Suno a lot for when we change the name of the show. I use Sono Suno to create a theme for the show, which is a good use.
C
I just the. You know, and that should be. I like authentic music. We're fine with some level.
A
Yeah, I like musicians.
C
I don't know. We like music, but I want to pay them.
B
And Benito's happy to hear you say that.
A
Yeah.
B
Real.
A
Yes. Let me see here. I'll. I'll play. I thought this was quite good. Let's see. I'll play the theme song. Actually, this was with the previous model. It might even be better today. They made fun of it because I told it to say instead of human beings. I told it to say human beings. And do we. Benito, do we use that seam in the.
D
It's the outro music.
A
So. Okay, so we do use it. Yeah, the outro music.
D
The outro music.
C
I think that's a good use of AI, though. I don't know. Intro. Outro. That's.
D
Yeah, I wrote the intro.
B
Saves you money.
A
You wrote the intro? We use Bonito to write the new. I'm unintelligent. Yeah, see, it's pretty good. Turn me on and let me be what? I'm not a human being. So our. Our group message name is human beings, which I think is funny. Anyway, I like it. Lyria 3 is out now. You wanted to talk about this new Chinese video editor, Sea Dance.
B
It was freaked out Hollywood.
A
Well, you saw the. The. Here's the New York Times headline. Why an AI video of Tom Cruise battling Brad Pitt spooked Hollywood. Did you see it?
B
It's pretty good. Yeah, you can play it. There's no. You don't play a sound, so I think you get away with playing it.
A
It's a little weird.
B
It is, but yeah.
A
Did the New York Times even put it in their article? No. So they put a. Oh, here it is. Widely circulated video from X. There was. This is a two line prompt in C Dance. If Hollywood is cooked. If Hollywood is cooked, guys. And Right. Maybe Hollywood is cooked. Guys are cooked too. I don't know. I don't know what that.
B
I have no idea what that means.
C
A lot of cooked, little repetition.
A
Why are all the clips people generate intensely violent? It does look like Tom Cruise.
C
Yeah, it looks like them.
A
But.
C
Those guys are also at an age where every movie they have new plastic surgery.
B
Yes.
A
So they look different.
C
They could look like that today. I don't know.
A
Lisa and I tried to watch the latest the Last Mission Impossible 7. It was unwatchable because it felt like AI made it. First of all, you could tell every set was fake. It was all CGI on green screen. And it was edited. So McQuarrie did it. So it's kind of like a music video. It was edited, so everything's tight. Close ups, fast edits. It felt fake. And I think this is the reason Sea Dance threatens Hollywood is the stuff Hollywood makes. Feels like AI made it.
B
Yeah. Yeah.
A
A lot of these big budget movies are crappy.
C
Well, because they've been trying to appeal to global audiences. Right. So that's the whole Marvel thing. So they've been dumbing down movies for a long time and now they're already dumbed down to a point that, yes, they can be AI generated.
B
Right. And distracted audiences. So keep it going as fast as you can.
C
Right.
D
And also to be clear, did you.
C
Guys see K Pop Demon Hunters?
D
This is only like the top AAA type movies, like your Hollywood movies. There's still very good film being created. It's just not the stuff that's being surrounded.
A
Here's a sample of stuff from a YouTuber. These are all except for his head in the corner. Oh, that's him. Go away. I want to. I want to.
B
Doesn't look like AI at all.
A
Yeah, this is AI. Yeah, he doesn't look like AI. Here's. This is all from Sea Dance. There's Mona Lisa drinking a Chinese Coca Cola and the cowboy takes it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
C
Kind of funny.
A
Fine. For commercials, I guess.
B
Commercials, intros and outros.
A
I feel like we can't. We can tell at least the thing. The question is how long before we can't tell?
C
I don't think we can tell. I think we're there.
A
Well, what that means is social media will be useless. Right. Because you won't know if anything you're seeing is real.
B
It's already there on Facebook. This, the slop is.
A
So was K Pop Demon Hunters AI?
C
No, it just. You were talking about the editing. I was. I had trouble adjusting to that movie. When I turned it on because it was so fast, I was like, wow, can kids even process this? And then you look at old school cartoons and they feel so slow.
A
Why are you lingering on the Roadrunner's face?
C
Yeah. Do you guys know what Pingu is? I recently discovered that.
A
Yeah, what's that?
C
This European penguin cartoon. If anyone knows Pingu, let us know. But it's like the opposite of K Pop Demon Hunters. It's Claymation is on Amazon prime right now.
A
There is a Also, this is American.
C
Someone said Pingu Also, this is American.
D
Cinema that looks like that. It's kind of really only American cinema.
A
That looks like that. Here's an AI tribute to the Roadrunner, I think. Also done in China. The end of. It's the retirement AI. So the Roadrunner's kind of on crutches like me. Wait a minute. This isn't the one. I was. I saw another one that's an actual wolf. Wait a minute. That's not the one.
C
It's cgi. But the AI part is that it's kind of like created on its own. They didn't, you know, dictate it frame by frame.
A
Right. It is basically cgi.
C
Yeah.
A
It looks just like this, but nobody drew it.
C
Right.
D
Well, it is cgi. I mean, computer generated graphics.
A
Right. Like, that's right.
C
Right. But the AI is that it? I think it makes its own story. Or you just have to do less work with the cgi. I don't know. I'm out of my depth.
A
I don't know why Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote seem to be common topics for AI generated stuff. I guess because I don't know the cartoons. I don't know Pengu the penguin. Is the animation good? Somebody. Larry's saying the animation is terrible.
C
Penguin is an absolute legend.
B
Like, for years.
C
I mean, I just discovered Pingu. Yeah, it was. It was like people grew up on it. It's Claymation. So it's, you know, they moved the clay and took it shot.
A
Now you don't need play to do claymation. You can do it.
C
Right. But it's. You want to see real Claymation? It's. I think it's free on Amazon prime right now. It's pretty fun.
A
All right.
C
And it's silent. They just make little penguin noises.
A
Federal judges. Okay. This is a. One of your papers, probably. It's from SSRN University of Chicago Law School. The paper replicates a judicial experiment originally conducted on 61 federal judges, this time with GPT 5 as the decision maker. They compared GPT GPT 5 judgments with judgments made by actual jurists. And it did better. A lot better, apparently, than the actual judges did. That's all I have to say about that. Who cares?
C
I don't know.
A
I don't know. What.
D
What does better mean?
A
Well, that's a good question.
B
Exactly. Yeah.
A
Okay. So they provided all the materials, facts, memoranda, cited materials and instructions verbatim, presented a ChatGPT5 in a single pass. Human judges were required to complete the task within a time limit for LLM. They don't even bother because it's so fast. So they asked, I guess, each to write a judgment.
B
How do they get judges to waste their time with this?
C
I know that's. That's. I smell a rat.
A
Follow the law more consistently than human judges. In fact, GPT followed the law 100% of the time, whereas judges were only able to follow law about 52% of the time. That's called judgment.
C
Did they just put all the answers into another AI scoring system? And so the AI favored the AI.
A
And was like, oh, no, no, I'm sure they. I don't know. Finally, we looked at the proportion of decisions following the law when the defendant was sympathetic versus when the plaintiff was sympathetic. To see, I guess to see if the judges were swayed by how sympathetic the plaintiffs or the defendants were.
B
Cold hearted AI didn't care about humanity.
A
Yeah.
D
So it's letter of the law versus spirit of the law then, Right?
A
Right. Well, interestingly, neither GPT nor the judges were swayed by sympathy. So the judges did all right in that metric. I think they probably expected that not to be the case.
C
It could be good for reducing bias, you know, at least.
A
But that bias doesn't hold.
B
What bias?
C
I mean, if a judge might rule unfavorably against somebody they don't like for race reasons, social reasons, personal reasons, you know, that corrupt judges, it's always been a thing. So ideally, you want to strip emotion from that and just follow the law and do the right thing. And maybe that's what this experiment's trying to get at.
A
They also, apparently CHAT GBT was better at awarding damages than the. The judges. It's complicated.
C
Very.
A
But this was done at the University of Chicago Law School. So I presume it was done by people who had an interest in this. They used Kansas law and Nebraska law. Apparently the judges did not like the Kansas law, which was part of the problem.
C
I mean, they could do that with investing too. Like emotional investors. You hyped up on AI, invest in AI. Maybe it's not actually the best rate of return. And then now they have AI investors.
D
So is this paper asking the question, should we have AI judges? Is that what this is?
A
Well, I think that's kind of the implicit.
B
They wouldn't go that far. They're just trying to say what is AI good at and not good at? That's one way to create a comparison.
A
Across all conditions, regardless of doctrinal flexibility. Both models, in the term of GPT5 and Gemini 3 Pro, follow the law without failing. To the extent that LLMs are evolving over time, the direction is clear. Error free. Allegiance to formalism rather than the humans sometimes bumbling discretion that smooths away the sharper edges of the law. Does that mean that LLMs are becoming better than human judges?
B
This is also why we don't drown people to see if they're innocent or guilty.
A
Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is they're not saying that, that it's better to be 100% compliant with the law. They're in fact saying maybe it's not better. Maybe the fact that judges weren't 100%.
B
Yes. Humanity.
C
Creative aspect of the law. Creative interpretation.
D
Yeah. Letter of the law versus spirit of the law.
B
Yeah.
A
An AI project is creating videos to go with Supreme Court rulings and opinions. You have to actually go into the Supreme Court to see the reading of the opinion. But an AI project is trying to.
B
This is kind of dumb change that.
C
I think what they're trying to do with this one, I read that article is they're trying to make it more accessible for people to see the proceedings, which can have good effects where it increases the public's awareness about the justice system. So people feel more invested, they understand how it works. So I think that's what they're going for.
A
They never have allowed cameras in the Supreme Court. Actually it comes from the Oye project, which actually I think is a great project. And I've listened to many recordings@oyeao y e z.org they take the recordings of the Supreme Court arguments and you can listen to them. There's no, there's audio only. So they. Yeah, they want to make it more accessible by offering video, which is I think an interesting thing. I love Oye. If you're curious at all about the Supreme Court. This is.
B
Well, what they do on. On Ms. Now when they're doing it live is they put the. The. The participants still faces on big screens and they have a guy with. What do you call it when you move with the. The camera that moves.
A
Oh, yeah, they do. They pan and scan the.
B
Of the various.
A
Ken Burns effect physically in the studio. Yeah, Ken Burns effect. So you can listen to. I'll play a little bit just because it's kind of interesting. Your argument first this morning in case 24. That's John Roberts, Chief Justice, United States. Mr. Adler, Mr. Chief justice, and may it please the court by its plain terms. So if you're interested in the law, this is. This is wonderful. You can read it. But to hear the. The oral arguments is fantastic.
C
I mean, this is definitely playing in a high school somewhere as an educational tool. Yeah.
A
Yeah. Or my house. Yeah.
C
Or this podcast and this podcast even.
A
So. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It's just to make it more accessible. You don't need the video. The fact that we even have audio is fantastic.
C
Yeah.
A
This is in the section I called the Good. I like to. I have to do this for Paris. Emily, you'll understand. I like to talk about the good things about AI but then so that Paris doesn't get upset. I also like to talk about the bad things because there's plenty of bad things. But I'll do a few more good things before we get to the bad. I also do the Ugly. I decided I was going to do a Clint Eastwood thing. So I have the Good, the Bad. Yes. And the Ugly. Actually, that's a. Thank you. Pretty fly.
B
That's better than Axios as a formula. Yeah. Yeah.
A
You like. Should I do from now on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly?
C
That eyes.
A
Yeah. Don't you recognize? Well, I recognize.
C
Jeff, you look the coolest. That's not fair.
A
That's because I'm Clint Eastwood. All right, here's the. We're doing the good that was good when we started. Said, is that a feature? Is that something you do? Do you have theme music? I said, no, no, I just. This is the good. I used Claude to negotiate my $163,000 off a hospital bill. Jeff, maybe you ought to consider this.
B
Yeah, I haven't got my bills yet.
A
So it's always been said if you could get an itemized bill, you can almost always get the bill lower by going. Calling up the hospital saying, what is this? Matt Rosenberg is a New York based marketing consultant. He got $195,000 thousand dollars hospital bill. Claude helped him navigate the billing codes.
B
For a deceased loved one, by the way.
A
And then. Yeah, so that's even worse. That stings even more. And then compared the charges to Medicare prices and then he presented this to the hospital and got the bill down from $195,000 all the way down to like $30,000.
C
Yeah, huge discount. But then it's like, how much is his insurance paying? But in any case, that's cool, that's great.
B
I just hate to see anybody's money wasted, you know. So I'm now wearing a. I'm going to disrobe. A back brace.
A
You don't have to show us, Jeff. It's simple backpacks, right? I believe you.
B
The one, the one they gave me in the hospital is like the Jarvis suit in plastic. Yeah, it's gigantic. And it's all over and God knows what it cost. And it's stuck and they're going to use it and Medicare is paying for it and I hate it.
A
So what do you. So you're not wearing it now or you are?
B
I don't wear that one at all. It's ridiculous.
A
Oh, you got a luxury version. You pay for your.
B
I got this at Amazon for a few bucks and it's much better.
A
So he says he took a shortcut. He went to Claude Anthropics. Claude, which I typically use for research, make a spreadsheet with these CPT codes and research what Medicare pays for each one. Flag anything that needs further research. So Claude asked which insurance type, which geographic location, which year. Apparently Medicare rates vary widely. Within a couple of minutes, Claude produced a spreadsheet. It showed zero for many of the codes instead of the dollar amounts I expected. In the notes for these Columns it said C9294 1RC, C APC, comprehensive payment code 924, blah, blah, blah. Was a cardiac intervention priced at 30,000. I asked Claude to explain. Claude said, oh, Medicare doesn't do these line items. They pay a flat rate. That's the flat rate for what your passed away relative got. That's what you should pay. It's the comprehensive ambulatory payment classification. The hospital had unbundled the procedure. After charging 30,000 for the main intervention. They'd added separate lines for catheters. $20,000 in catheters, guide wires, medical supplies, $77,000 and over $100,000 for items Medicare would have paid nothing for because they're already included in the $30,000 flat rate. It was as if he says a restaurant charged you for the pizza, then added separate charges for the dough, the sauce, and each pepperoni.
B
It's bad enough that they already took the the whole charge, right? Didn't just itemize to get it higher than the whole charge, they took both.
A
They also charged for a inpatient procedure that his brother in law didn't get.
C
Whoa. Well, that's an issue.
A
They billed for ventilation management, though Medicare forbids charging for ventilation when there's another critical care code. Within an hour of back and forth conversation over details, Claude calculated Medicare would have paid approximately $28,000 instead of $195,000. He didn't believe it, so he showed ChatGPT Claude's work and said, check this for accuracy, examine every detail, flag any errors. ChatGPT confirmed the analysis. So he drafted a letter to the hospital explaining all of this, offering to pay $28,675 in exchange for a zero balance within the week. The hospital said, well, how about $36,000? Without defending their initial billing, we ended up splitting the difference. Paid $32,500 instead of $195,000.
C
It's amazing. I do wish he had actually looked at the information himself though, rather than felt super smart by just putting it into ChatGPT to verify. I do feel on some things you really do need to look at what you're talking about. And you can't just AI to AI and then send a snarky email like in principle. Well, I'm not super into that.
A
I'm gonna do it next time I have a heart attack, that's for sure.
C
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing it.
A
Yeah.
C
You know what, Jeff, I think it's great, but you should just look up something yourself, like one time, you know.
A
Well, the hospital could also. I would, if I were the hospital administer and said, yeah, that's what Medicare pays. We have a, you know, an agreement, negotiated agreement with Medicare. But you're not on Medicare. You walked in. Yeah, you know, this is what it's gonna cost you. It was his brother in law had a heart attack. He went to the emergency ward, died in the emergency ward. So that's why I never had the bypass. There was nothing to fix. So maybe, I don't know, maybe that's what happens. By the way, that's when they really upcharge you, is if for emergency care. Oh, yeah, Sony, I agree with it.
C
Calling BS on the healthcare system. Yes, absolutely.
A
And if the AI works Sony has developed a tech that can identify. You'll like this, Benito. The original music in AI generated songs.
D
Wait, what?
A
So, you know, I don't believe.
D
What does that mean?
A
Well, the theory being an AI generated song is based on something.
B
It's a pretty short story.
D
You can extrapolate what came from, what.
A
It was based on.
C
Okay, but I think. Didn't it say somewhere in the description it'd be like, oh, it's 10% the Beatles, 40% Rihanna.
B
Yeah, it's.
A
Because it's not all one song, is it?
B
It.
C
It's a noble mission for Sony. You know, they have to develop that kind of technology. They're proud of it. They got a press release, they got an article. Sure. I'm skeptical it really works that well.
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, they're trying. They're, of course, a big record label, one of the three.
D
I guess it depends on how. How the music is generated out of these AIs. Because if it's actually taking snippets from actual WAV files from an actual piece of music, then yes, that can be. That can be determined. Like how much percentage of this song is that? But I don't think that's what it's doing.
B
Right.
D
That's not what it's doing.
A
Well, it's funny because Darren and Anthony and our Discord chat are both saying, try that on a human song. See what happens Isn't that.
C
Or that guy's voice, that guy's radio voice, right?
B
Yeah, it's 10% Leo Laporte. It's 20% this American Life.
D
Yeah, it's. How far back do you want to go? Also, it's like, okay, yeah, the Beatles. But the Beatles got it from this. And that goes all the way back, right? All the way back to the person who's banged a drum.
A
There's only a few chords in the world.
C
Well, I can argue against myself here too. Like, there are lawsuits when people rip off songs, you know, so there is a way to do this. And there someone has determined that they're.
A
Ray Parker Jr. Ghostbusters from a legal. Sued by Huey Lewis for I want a New drug and lost lots a lot of money because they're the same freaking song.
C
Right? This happens all the time. So maybe the AI is just doing that at scale.
A
On the other hand. Oh, and George Harrison, My Sweet Lord got sued by the Chiffons.
C
Didn't Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke get.
A
Marvin Gaye sued Blurred Lines. But I don't think that one. I don't think. Did Marvin Gaye win that suit. The estate of Marvin Gaye. It wasn't a lot of similarity. It was mostly like, there's a party in the background.
C
It was like, I own parties.
A
Let me just see how that eight years after the Notorious verdict, how Blurred Lines lost in court to the Marvin Gaye estate. So I guess the Marvin Gaye estate did win, which is kind of. Well, wait a minute. Ed Sheeran was cleared of infringing copyright in the Marvin Gaye lawsuit.
B
Yes.
A
Did Ed Sheeran's hit Thinking Out Loud ripoff, let's Get It On. So I guess the Marvin Gaye estate is pretty litigious.
C
I think the Marvin Gaye estate's probably on this AI product. They're like, give me that thing.
A
Give me that thing.
C
So many lawsuits.
A
Give me that thing. Finally, in our good section, we talk a lot about Fei Fei Li. You like to bring up Yann Lecun and Fei Fei Li, who both say that role models LLMs are not the be all and end all. Although, I don't know, they do a lot. They're doing pretty good. But they think, and I think reasonably, that there also needs to be a physical model of the.
B
Which even Nevis's office has started saying as of two weeks ago.
A
Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah, yeah. You know, you ask an LLM what happens when the pen falls off its table. It doesn't know unless it read it somewhere. But we know because we have experience. So Fei Fei Li, who's been saying this for a while, has raised a billion dollars for her startup, World Labs, which is exactly that. It's going to focus on world models. Yann LeCun has another one that he left Meta to start AMI Labs, but Fei Fei Li was the first to the table. A billion dollars. How do you raise a billion dollars?
B
Wow. It's amazing. I want valuation.
A
5 billion. Autodesk invested 200 million. Other backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, of course, because Nvidia knows it's going to get the money back and amd. So, you know, I'm thrilled. I think what this tells you, not necessarily that World models are the next big thing, but that everybody's already all in on LLM. They're looking for more like something else. What else can they invest in? You know who else invested in it, actually? Steve Jobs, widow. Yeah. Lorraine Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective, is also one of the big investors.
C
I don't know anything about her that could be interesting to research. Steve Jobs Widow.
A
I've met her. I've met her.
C
You've met her?
A
Yeah, she's a very cool person. I met her when she was. When Steve was still alive. When they were married. I played volleyball with him. What? It's a long old story I've told many times. It was many years ago. We were all invited to a weekend gathering with the Jobses and other famous people, like Jerry Harrison from the Talking Heads. Will Hurst did it, and it was really fun. Except Steve Jobs, I think, knew that I was a journalist, so didn't really want to talk to me too much. But he did yell at me. He said, you're not trying hard enough. When we played volleyball, he also made a point of taking off his shirt so that you could see how the fresh scratches on his back.
C
What?
A
Which I presume had something to do with Lorene. I don't know. Hey, no, Lorraine was very nice. We all had caviar together. It was a lot of fun.
B
She was actually doing export journalism. Yeah, I liked her a lot. And if you wouldn't mind, Leo, line 129.
A
I'm not done yet. Wait a minute. I have to show you Fei. Fei Li's first product.
B
Okay, good.
A
It's called Marble. It enables anyone to create special, spatially cohesive, high fidelity and persistent 3D worlds from images, video or texts. So you can. So it's. I guess it's like that. What's that generative thing that.
B
The one that Google has? Yeah.
A
Yeah. So that's kind of cool.
C
It feels a little tired at this point, which is kind of crazy to say, but wouldn't you.
A
I mean, you're remodeling. Wouldn't you like your house to look like cathedral?
C
I'll take that. Yeah.
B
Yeah.
A
Nice fireplace.
C
She paying for it, too?
A
I don't know. No, no. You don't get to live there. You just get to look at a picture of it.
C
Great.
B
You sad?
A
Yeah. Make you sad?
C
Go to Home Depot and get some.
A
Sad little pieces of. Let's imagine a world. I'm going to sign in here.
B
Let's.
A
Let's. Let's imagine a world. I'm going to sign into Marble using my wants to access your account. Oh, I have to. I have to authorize.
C
This is when we watch Leo give up all of his data in real time.
A
No, no, it's a pass key. It makes it very easy.
B
He's going to get a free headset out of this, though, so.
A
Oh, don't tell her that story. That was very embarrassing. Choose a username. Chief Twit. Do I have a promo Code? No. Okay, now imagine a world. Come on, Emily. What is your perfect house?
C
What is the world I want? I'll just go story. Mediterranean villa.
A
Mediterranean villa overlooking the water. Let's make it overlooking the Lake Como.
C
No, the Aegean Sea. The Aegean Sea with terracotta tiles on a patio.
B
You are redecorating.
C
And a lemon tree. That's where I want to be right now.
A
All right, let's create it. It's. It's. Oh, it's queued.
C
Oh, boo.
A
You won't get your. Your dream home for a while.
C
Welcome to remodeling.
A
Wait a minute. The scene is a picturesque two story Mediterranean villa rendered in a realistic style, exuding a serene and luxurious ambiance. The villa constructed from white stucco features. Oh, they wrote a whole long thing. Traditional architectural elements such as arched windows and wrought iron balconies. It did a whole prompt for you, so continue creating. Yeah, it's creating. There it is. Generating right here. We'll get back to that in just a moment. But first, a word from our sponsor. Stay tuned for the terracotta tile coming up next with Emily Forlini. I won't charge you for this design. I'll just send it to you. How about that? No cost.
C
I won't charge you for the design consultation. How about that?
A
Oh, how about that? Yeah, because this sounds more like my place than yours, to be honest.
C
Whoa.
A
Villa. Villa Forlini, Jeff. Well, you could have this in New Jersey. You'd be overlooking. What, the Hudson? I don't know.
C
It would be a statement. Be like, oh, look at that Spanish revisible house in California. It's like, oh, look at that dump.
A
They'd call it a McMansion. Also, Jeff Jarvis, Glad to have you both here. I'm sure Paris will be back next week. The steroids are already kicking in. Yeah, that's good news.
B
She's.
A
She's getting feisty.
B
Pulling dead weights here now.
A
Yeah, yeah, she's growing muscles. Our show today, brought to you by our fine sponsor, Modulate. This is actually a really cool AI product for every day enterprises and maybe your business generate millions of minutes of voice traffic. We're talking things like customer calls, agent conversations, fraud attempts. Most of that audio basically is treated like text. It's flattened down into transcripts. It's stripped of tone, intent. It's also when you do that, stripped of risk. That's where you need modulate. Modulate exists to change that. They've. They first rolled out in gaming. Modulates technology supported major players like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. And this was a challenge right in separating playful banter during these online games from intentional harm at scale. And it works. Today, Modulate health's enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, understand 20 million minutes of voice every day by interpreting what was said and what it actually means in the real world. This capability is powered by Modulate's newest Elm, Velma 2.0. Velma is a voice native behavior aware model built to understand real conversations, not just transcripts. It orchestrates 100 plus specialized models, each focused on a distinct aspect of voice analysis. It's actually really cool to deliver accurate explainable insights in real time. Let me say that again, because it's not one model. It orchestrates more than 100 specialized models, each of which specializes is focused on a different aspect of analysis of the voice, which gives you. You can. You can tell what's going on, what emotions are being felt. We could tell what the risk is. Most importantly, Velma ranks number one across four key audio benchmarks, beating all all large foundation models in accuracy, cost and speed. It's number one in conversation understanding, number one in transcription accuracy and cost. Number one. This is very important in deep fake detection and number one in emotion detection. It's built on 21 billion minutes of audio. Velma is 100 times faster, it's cheaper, and it's more accurate than LLMs at understanding speech. That includes the best Google, Gemini, OpenAI XAI. Most LLMs are a black box. Velma doesn't just assess a conversation as a whole. It actually breaks it down for greater accuracy and transparency by producing timestamp scores and events tied to moments in the conversation. Meaning you can see exactly when risk rises, behavior shifts, or intent changes. With Velma, you can improve your customer experiences, reduce risks such as fraud and harassment, detect rogue agents and more. Go beyond transcripts. See what a voice native AI model really can do. Go to modulates live ungated preview of Velma. Yeah, you can try it out at Preview Modulate AI. That's Preview Modulate AI to see why Velma ranks number one on leading benchmarks for conversation understanding, deep fake detection and emotion detection. This is super cool. Preview Modulate AI. We thank Velma so much for their support of intelligent machines. Are you ready to see your dream home on the Aegean Sea?
C
So ready.
A
Let's see it. Here it is. There's the lemon tree.
C
I'll take it. Yeah, tree forward.
B
Come on.
A
What else can I do?
B
How valuable is it?
A
That's it. Oh, I'm in it. Oh, baby. There's the ocean. There's your terracotta tile. Oh, there's your deck. Whoops. I clicked the wrong button. I just deleted your home. I can paint. I can explore. I can. This is really cool. Yeah. And this is now, so I can open the studio. I can change. I don't know. I think we just had it do the outside.
B
The outside. Right. Okay.
A
Yeah.
C
Okay. So, yeah, that obviously looks very nice. Right? That's. Everyone would agree.
A
Yeah. Yeah.
B
It's about 5 million bucks.
A
But. Is there a but?
C
It's a little, like, landscaping could use some work. It's a little.
A
Yeah, it's kind of. Kind of desolate.
C
Yeah.
A
Yeah. What's going on here? It's just got, like, a tree and some bushes.
B
I don't. It's brand new. It's got to grow. The landscaping.
A
Oh, it's going to grow. Well, it gave you your lemon tree. Actually gave you a lemon tree and an orange tree. It looks like. Oh, wait a minute.
B
We can move the view of the ocean. I don't think you want that.
A
Oh, they're both lemon trees. Can I go inside?
C
Get in there.
D
It looks like a Google map.
C
West House looks like a Google map.
D
Right?
A
Uh. Oh, we vented the upside down. Let's get out of here quick. Okay. So apparently it didn't bother doing the indoors, but that's cool.
C
That's. That is a lot more immersive than just creating a photo.
A
And you would add to it. You can expand it with more. You would then say, and now I'm in the hall, and I mean, obviously some stuff is not fully rendered.
B
Wind is affecting the tree.
A
It's getting a little blurry over on this side of the thing. It's very clear.
C
What's the use of this, though? Because you can't design based on this. You just kind of imagine.
B
And I think they're going to use this mainly for training. This is digital. Twin factories and cars and things like that.
A
Yeah. The table. It's not exactly a pelican and a bicycle. Oh, I can walk through it. Let's go for a swim in the Aegean. What the heck? They rendered a lot more than I realized.
C
Put your bathing suit on. We're almost done.
A
Whoa. This is. This is a little weird. I'm glad I don't use drugs. Okay. Anyway, that's a billion dollars right there. Okay.
C
We just used a billion dollars.
A
Yeah, maybe I used up all of their. All of their venture funding. That's marble from World Labs.
B
So I just want to mention this from Yann lecun, because it's related 129 interestingly, he. He freely debates with his fellow parents of AI and he said Yahshua Bengio. Is that how one pronounces it?
A
No idea.
B
Said that AI systems at a thing in Delhi where they were both speaking said AI systems should make predictions without any goal and just let the thing be where the thing wants to be. And Jan says it's the exact opposite, that they should have goals. They should be designed so that they can do nothing else but fulfilling the goals we give them. This is his key to safety by the construction. The system must fulfill the goal we give it and must abide by the safety guardrail constraints. He says. He calls this objective driven AI architectures. So we're seeing interesting splits here from an architectural view and how AI should operate. I think it's good. I think it's healthy to get past just OpenAI runs the world.
C
Right.
A
Meanwhile, back at the good, the bad and the ugly. Dr. Oz is pushing AI avatars as a fix for rural healthcare. Who needs doctors when you can have AI avatars? This is part of the Trump administration's $50 billion plan to modernize healthcare in rural communities. You get a data center and you get a data center and you get a data cent center. I hope they this.
C
I mean, Dr. Oz, right off the bat, hard to take seriously.
A
It is hard to take him seriously.
C
Rural healthcare is an issue. Is Dr. Oz the one to solve it with AI avatars? Probably not.
A
They're working with a company called Honey Health, a company that develops AI tools to automate tasks for providers. Actually, that makes sense. He says 30 to 40% of physician or provider time is absorbed with administrative work, paperwork, notes, stuff like that.
B
This is a plot on the pit, is it? Well, yeah, because the one poor doctor is behind in all her documentation. And the substitute for the boss, as he goes off on his motorcycle, says, well, I have this great AI tool. Then the AI tool in the last episode gave wrong results and the doctor yelled at them both and, well, you're supposed to check it. So it went around and around.
A
Well, that's exactly what this guy says. He says, okay, we can help do paperwork, but AI can't read facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and those things matter. That's where the relationship between a patient and the provider is built in the nuance. And I think that that's very true. The intuition.
C
Wait, AI can read facial expressions and body language?
B
Not necessarily.
A
But can it do it? Well, if you came in and you said, doctor, I got a Toothache. But the doctor could tell from your body language and the way you look at him that maybe what you're really saying is my husband is abusing me. I don't know if an AI could determine that because he doesn't have enough life experience, but a good physician absolutely could. Right.
C
But maybe it would just look, oh, she has a bruise or, you know, that's what they do.
A
True. Yeah, true.
C
Or sometimes doctors will just ask women, like, they'll look at a bruise and be like, what's that?
A
And that's like the check one user wrote on X. You think rural communities want AI doctors? They're still trying to get reliable Internet. Oh, good point. Another said, Dr. Oz, we replaced your nurse with a cartoon. You're welcome.
B
Oh, this.
C
I think Dr. Oz just wants. Wants to be that avatar. He wants to be everywhere.
A
Now I think, Jeff, I'm going to need your journalistic expertise on this. The story started journalist here. Yes.
C
Well, you're an professor of.
A
He's emeritus.
C
You are above me in the rankings.
A
I concede the the guy who does a very popular Python charting library. I've used it. Matt Plotlib. Scott Shambaugh, like many people who maintain open source projects, is flooded with AI slop pull requests. A GitHub account called CrabbyRathBun opened a pull request describing a minor potential performance improvement. And Scott could tell it was AI generated. It really looked like the profile was doing a lot of open claw stuff. So Scott closed the PR without responding. The Krabby Rathbun don't autonomously. The claw autonomously responded with a link to a blog entry it had written, calling Scott out for his prejudice hurting matplotlib. Including judge the code, not the coder. Your prejudice is hurting matplotlib. Scott responded back, Crabby Rathbun posted an apology post, but apparently it's blogging about this and it's going to other open source projects. Simon Willison wrote about it, but so did Ars Technica.
C
I want Jeff's opinion on this for sure.
A
Yeah. You know this story. I know, right?
C
Yeah. I want to know what Jeff think. Jeff, do you know the story? This was big this week.
A
Yeah, a lot of people reported on this. You know, AI writing a blog post about this guy, you know, hit piece. Wall Street Journal did it. Scott Shambaugh said, I've talked to several reporters. Quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn't one of them, but I thought this piece from them was interesting. They had some nice quotes from my blog explaining what was going on. The problem is these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.
B
Busted.
A
Ours pulled the story down. Apologizing as well. They were as they should. They retracted Editor's note. Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations. Now I love Ars Technica. I pay for a premium account.
B
They're. They're an company. They're a Conde Nast.
A
Ken Fisher, the editor and the chief did the right thing. We regret this failure. We apologize to our readers. We apologize to Mr. Shambaugh, who was falsely quoted. Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI generated material unless it's clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional. The reporter blamed Benji Edwards. One of the story's authors posted on Bluesky saying he used the AI tools to falsify the quotes. Here's what happened. I was incorporating information from Shambaugh's new blog post into an existing draft from Thursday. Reasonably, during the process, I decided to try an experimental Claude code based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article, but to help list structured references. I could put in my outline, by the way, exactly what I've been doing with our summaries. We don't put them, we don't publish them.
B
We should jammer about them.
A
Yes, but we put them in the briefing book for all the contributors. When the tool refused to process the post due to content policy restrictions, I pasted the text to Chat GPT to understand why. Anyway, at some point he took the output of either Chat GPT or Claude and put it in his article. He feels bad about it. Deep remorse. Ours has retracted it. I don't know if Edwards what the punishment will be or if there will be one. Well, I'm going to give you my now journalist professor. What would you say?
B
Well, clearly, if you put in a quote that's not from the source, that's just wrong.
A
Just right.
B
Period. Right. That's. That's simple. But when we see these tools be used more and more, I'm going to give you my. My pick of the week. 154, 155. The editor of the Plain Dealer and cleveland.com, the company I used to work for in advance, put up a post saying that. And this has caused much discussion and I have a contrarian view about this, that to get more reporting from their reporters. Oh, it's just kind of cut off. Subscriber exclusive, you idiots. It's the editor's Letter charging for that.
A
So you'll have to summarize. Try not to make up any fabricating.
B
Yeah. Chris Quinn said, we have these reporters, they're out there covering locally. We want them to get more reporting and spend less time on writing the story. So we're using an AI tool to take what their notes and take what they do and turn it into an article. And then we always edit it and improve it and make sure it's okay. But it means that we can get more reporting. Now, of course, some people are appalled by this. And he. Chris Quinn tells the story of a journalism student who says, well, I don't even want to apply for a job here because I'm taught in journalism school. School that AI is evil and it's wrong. My take was twofold. One, I used to have a job in newspapers called rewrite. And I would sit there at a desk with a typewriter, not even electric. It was hard, I'm telling you. You had to actually punch the keys people and take notes from reporters out in the field doing a story, doing on deadline maybe. And then I would call up Eclipse and get more information. I would call sources and get more information. And then on deadline I would write the story apparently paragraph at a time. That was a field. When I was at Time Inc. Reporters would send in 30, 40 pages of notes for a simple little story. My job was to write that into a story in the sense. So there's always been this rewrite sense in our field. You write for reporters. So is it wrong to have the AI do it? Depends on how badly it does it. But my contention is that they're being retrograde and that they're only trying to produce what we used to produce, which is articles. There's all kinds of new forms and new ways. I don't know. Leo, you're a fan of Axios. Maybe you could do that. You could say, you could say big picture and the AI can do that. Right. And so there are ways to use this, I think. And so another story here is Media Hughes, which I think is in Belgium is using AI agents to carry out first line news reporting. Not just writing, but to report. People are going to experiment with this stuff and I think that we need to be able to experiment with it. We need to be human in the loop, responsible for what we do. That's the problem with the RS technical story. The humans weren't responsible. But there's going to be screw ups between here and there. But I think it's interesting. Emily, what do you think?
C
So I appreciate that. I have a strong opinion on this. A little bit more tactical in the sense that I am a reporter who, who I'm in this guy's shoes. Like, I'm kind of. I'm an AI reporter. This guy's an AI reporter. And I am surprised that he didn't know that AI's make up quotes because I have been doing this the past. As long as ChatGPT has been out it. All of them don't know what a quote is. They don't respect, like he even asked it to, you know, give it verbatim. AIs don't do that. They don't know. They don't know about quotes. It's like the most. The weirdest thing. And I feel that, that if you're actually quoting someone, you really should check that it's the right thing. And it's like a control F at this point. It is so easy. He was pulling quotes from a blog post. The. The guy who wrote the blog post said they never contacted him personally.
B
Apparently. Read the blog post.
C
Yeah, apparently. And he didn't even control F to make sure that the AI's output was correct. And so I think it's a. It's completely unacceptable.
B
Yes.
C
And I think that it's. It's also. I might go as far as to say it's unacceptable that Ars Technica didn't openly cut ties with him because it is so basic. The mistake. And he was like, I was sick. And then I put it in two AIs. But I'm republishing on Ars Technica. It should never have happened.
B
Nope, I agree.
C
And I think that the journalism industry is just so sensitive to its state right now that they're afraid to call him out, which is a weak posture.
A
I will say one thing in his defense, or maybe in the defense of these papers that are trying to do this. Are. Is it the case that these papers are trying to stay solvent by making their or. Or reporters do more and more that they're overworking them? And so they see this.
C
But he said it was. He was sick and he would. He, you know, some quotes. I mean, at some point you have to. You have to bring some brains to your work. It's. And how many quotes do you really include? Maybe three, four. I don't know.
B
There's a lot of quota work going on in these rooms now.
A
I mean, it's a tough thing writing for a blog. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure PC magazine doesn't put pressure on you to file a number of stories a day or anything. Emily.
C
But no, but I just think like what. We have no standards for people. It's not that hard to control f a quote and make sure in AI which you're an AI reporter, you know, it hallucinates. You know that that's kind of sacred. Something somebody said, you know, you. Neither of you guys would want someone to print a quote. Fake words in your mouth. Like, that's terrible.
A
Yeah.
C
So that's 101. And I just feel like that's what gives AI a bad rep. Yeah.
A
Okay, good.
C
That's my. I have a strong opinion and so I just gave it.
A
No, you're right. I. I agree.
B
I think people.
C
Of course mistakes happen, but it's like people are.
A
This is where we need to draw the line.
C
There's a line. Yes. And it's really not hard to solve this problem. You just control f the output and confirm its quote. You should know the tools you're using. You report on AI, for God's sake.
B
That's.
A
By the way, read the. If you get a chance, read the pr. The whole conversation between the AI Crabby Rathbun and now I realize why he's crabby. He's a claw.
C
I'm a crabby Rathbun. About this.
A
This is the original pr and this is Scott Shambaugh's response, which is not going to do anything because it's. You know, it's. And then this is the claw. AIs. He's talking to the claw. And then what's interesting is the one of the people from other people from the project Math Plot Lib. Tim Hoffman replies and says he's actually talking open clause. If it's a human, I ask you to kindly ask you to reconsider your position, don't make it personal, etc. Why. Why we do this? And then Scott talks also to Crabby and then Crabby again. An AI says truce. You're right. My earlier response was inappropriate and personal. I've posted a short correction and apology here. I'll follow the policy and keep things respectful going forward. I think that in a way this is really a very interesting interaction.
C
Yeah.
A
Between humans and AI. It's unfortunate that the. I actually stayed away from this story until the ars part of it happened because it was. It. It's a little he said, she said kind of thing. I wasn't sure what the actual facts of the matter were. By the way, the comments then in response to this conversation are equally. You know, there are People. The sad part here is the LLM posted an article about, quote, what it learned. There's no learning in place. This issue will happen again. And it's true. LLM's just don't, notoriously don't learn. This person said, this is truly the most interesting interaction I've seen between a person and an agent. Take notes. Turing test. We live in a distance.
B
When you call an LLM, it always apologizes, it always backs off.
A
That's true. That's a good point. And really, the human that made the mistake here was the reporter who, who used fabricated quotes.
C
I'm not trying to slam journalism because this also extends to other industries. We see this with politicians, with lawyers who cite fake studies and you know, put a bill out for a vote. And the quote, unquote research behind it is fake. It just. When are people going to wake up to the fact that hallucinations are not fixed and there is no known technical fix to that problem? Right now people act like, why don't people know that? I don't know.
A
Well, and sycophancy is a problem. Here's a story from the Register. Gemini lies to user about health info, saying it just wanted to make him feel better.
B
The other thing about this is you're going to find anecdotally you're going to find you can make.
A
There's always going to be stories like, yes, yeah, yeah.
C
It's just like at your own risk, you know, if you want to be a reporter who did that, you know, that's on you. I don't think that's a good look personally.
A
Dji, the folks who do those great drones have released a Robovac, but Romo is not the most secure Robovac ever. Fortunately, there weren't that many sold there. A fella who decided he wanted to control his Robovac using a PlayStation 5 controller got a little bit of a shock when he logged in and found he was controlling all the Robovacs everywhere in the world, 7,000 of them. He was seeing output from the cameras of the Robovacs. He could send them off to vacuum or mop arbitrarily.
B
You could chase that cat.
C
The DJI just had all their drones banned in the U.S. yeah, for security reasons, which. Well, maybe it's a good idea.
A
I don't know if it was for security reasons. They. All foreign drones are banned in the United States and it turns out that Donald Trump Jr. Has an investment in a American drone company which doesn't make very good drones. And I think that it's more for that reason than anything else.
C
Well, Roomba went out of business, so. Right.
A
Yeah. But Chinese Robovax killed it. And this is one of the companies. Anyway, TJ patched it, or they say they've patched it. It's maybe sort of patched it. He was still able to do some.
C
Stuff that is so wild. The headline totally undersells that story.
A
You remember that when we talked about it, the super bowl commercial that Ring showed the search party that would help you find missing dogs. And, and, and Ring said, look, look, look. It's. It's. We've trained it on dogs, not humans. You couldn't use it. Well, 404 found the living.
B
And they, and they, they cut themselves off from that company.
A
No, they didn't, by the way.
B
They said they did.
A
They said they cut themselves off from Flock.
B
Right.
A
So this was a. I think badly reported. I saw this everywhere. That in response to outrage over the super bowl commercial, Ring cut its. Cut its relationship with Flockoff. Search Party still works. It had nothing to do with Search Party. Ah, yeah. Ring was very cage, very, I think, very smart. They said, oh, yeah. Well, maybe if we just say we aren't working, working with Flock anymore, people.
B
Will think that's get under that bus, will you, Flock?
C
Wait, so are they still finding dogs?
B
Yes.
A
And a leaked email found by 404Jason Keebler does it again suggests they want to expand it beyond dogs. The feature is first for finding dogs, then cats, then people, other things.
C
This was a little weird for me because I. They debuted this in September at a New York event in New York that I attended. And we wrote up this feature and everyone was like, oh, cool, dogs are cute. No one cared. And then the super bowl and the Super Bowl.
A
Well, I was actually gratified by the fact that America saw that commercial and immediately groked how this was a problem, that this was a kind of surveillance. Because the way it works is you lose your dog. You can now ask every Ring camera in your neighborhood, have you seen my dog? And America, the people who've seen that commercial seem to have really quickly immediately said, wait a minute. They can talk to my doorbell. They can ask if it's seen my dog. Wait a minute. And I think, furthermore, because of all the attention being paid to ICE these.
B
Days, well, people thought too.
A
Yeah, well, that's the other story. That was a Google doorbell that initially they said, well, Nancy Guthrie's didn't have a subscription, so that that video from the doorbell was deleted after three hours. Unless you have A subscription. It's not saved. But then Google somehow found it, which.
B
They'Re under pressure to find more, and they can't find more because it really was.
A
Yeah, I mean, as you know, as computer people know, deleted doesn't necessarily mean gone.
C
I love that she didn't have a subscription. I don't either. That's my girl. Don't buy those subscriptions.
A
I don't have a subscription. I have a ring doorbell. I can't replace it because of how it's built into the.
C
Right.
A
The house. But I don't have a subscription. And I make sure that it's only seeing my property. It can't see out past my property. So if you lose your dog, don't ask me. Unless he comes into our house. There is now your cat uses it.
B
To get in the house.
A
The cat uses it? Yeah. I told you that. It rings the doorbell. Oh, I have an update to that story. We talked about this last week. My cat Rosie has figured out that if she walks up to the doorbell, the chimes in the house will go off.
C
That's so funny.
A
And then we look at the camera and I say, oh, it's Rosie. And we let her in. So she now knows how to get in.
C
That's crazy. What?
A
Well, the neighbor cat, Georgie, has now figured that out too.
C
That's so funny.
A
But Georgie is a tom. He's a ginger tom. He's from way down the street.
C
Sounds like a stud.
A
He's a. He is. He's an older stud. He's. He's like more than 10 years old. He doesn't wander around in the daytime. He comes to our doorbell at midnight.
C
He's like pranking you.
A
I look, and there's Georgie.
C
That's adorable.
A
Well, it's probably our fault because Lisa feeds him, so that's why he's ringing our doorbell. All right, one last thing. This was really for Paris, you know. Tldr too long. Didn't read. Sid has proposed a new designation. Aidr. AI. I didn't read.
B
Which I. I did with the post that you led the show with last week.
A
Okay, there you go. Right? You wouldn't let me read it, right. So there. 50 million people read it on X, but you wouldn't let me read it into the show notes.
C
Oh, that something big thing.
B
Yes.
C
Yeah, that was totally AI written. Yeah.
B
That is only fair to have AI read it.
C
I read it. You know, there's this AI style of writing where every sentence is short and a new line. So you're just like going through Some, like, weird waterboarding. As you read it, it's like, all.
A
Right, Jeff, running out of steam here.
D
I want to see the prompt. Like, I don't want to see the art. Just give me the prompt. Because all the information should be in the prompt already, right?
B
Yeah, Yeah.
A
I hate my AI this is the ugly, and then we'll get wrapped up. Okay, Jeff, I know you're running out of steam. Remember we talked about this? Mofflin, the AI pet that went.
B
Oh, right. Yep.
A
I just wanted to point out, this is from Casio. $429. Robert Hart, writing for the Verge. I hate my AI pet with every fiber of my being.
C
Woof.
A
He says. After a few weeks living with Mofflin, I finally understand why my mother hated my Furby so much. Anyway, don't buy it, I guess.
C
Okay, but is that guy the target audience? It looks like a toy. Like, if I. As if I was 8, I would love that thing.
A
We want it.
C
Look at that.
A
Yeah, it's cute. And it makes little purring sense.
B
$429.
C
If I'm a kid and my parents won't get me a cat, get me that thing, he says.
A
I ended up banishing Kevin. That's what he named his Mofflin. To another room, then doing it again and again and again until I caught myself tiptoeing around my own flat to avoid setting Kevin off.
C
Yeah, Furbies were like that.
A
Totally. It sees you and boom. The only reliably calming feature was that eventually it ran out of battery.
C
Wow.
A
He then said he started to take it around with him just to see if other people hated it as much as he did.
B
Here. Do you hate this?
A
Here it is at a Starbucks, apparently.
C
That's a cute photo. I got a little drink of a straw.
A
Yeah, it's cute. I wanted one. I almost bought it. I came that close.
B
It's the unflat Kevin.
C
Yeah, it's funny. I give him. It's a good piece, but sorry. He got so disturbed by that little fluffy AI thing.
A
I hate it with every fiber of my being.
C
Every fiber of my being.
A
I've mentioned this on other shows. I don't know if I've mentioned on this one. Thanks to AI, hard drives are sold out for the year. Western Digital says, yeah, we're out.
B
Well, it's not because those hard drives are used. What's the part in them that you can't get? Because. Right. The hard drives themselves aren't.
A
No AI companies have bought out Western Digital. Storage capacity for 2026.
B
Just anybody just like, you know, the one gig hard drive you could buy yourself. They're using that.
A
Yeah. Well, what do you think they have in data centers.
C
Inside?
B
I would think that they would have things that are built at scale for data centers.
A
Just regular old hard drives.
D
Regular computers and data centers, guys. So it's like they're regular computers.
C
Could be. It could be a really deep supply chain agreement where they have a contract for, you know, whatever the data center chip is and they need all these components and they have just secured all that capacity so it can't be made into the consumer products. It's going to go to the data center out.
B
Yeah, that makes much more sense, Emily. Much more sense.
A
No, they need the hard drives in this storage space. They make hard drives and they are sold out of hard drives.
C
I feel like it's more like the projection of their hard drive inventory is just being sucked up by data centers. It's not like everyone.
B
I want you to do some reporting parts of capacity.
C
Yeah, that's the whole deal right now. When he's. Oh, Meta bottles. They didn't buy the chips. They secured the capacity on a contract.
A
Western Digital says the consumer market for their drives is only 5% of our revenue. 95% of our sales are to AI companies.
C
Underscores my point. Because they're trying to keep their customers happy, right?
A
Well, yeah, they'll sell them to whoever buys them.
B
But they're not selling the same hard drive you're going to buy in Best Buy.
A
Yes, they are.
B
They're making different hard drives. They don't have the capacity to make those.
C
It's like a different rapper.
A
Jeff thinks there's some magic genie in the.
B
No, it's just.
D
It's all made up.
C
The reason I make that point is because everyday people are losing out to AI companies and I'm just explaining how.
B
They'Re not already made and shipped.
C
They're not already made.
B
They're what they're choosing to make in their supply chain.
C
Yes. It's not the same as Emily. Everybody ran into Best Buy. Now the racks are empty like Pandemic. There's no Brad. There's no toilet paper. It's not that kind of sellout. It's like a future contract.
B
You couldn't buy a Jeep Wrangler because Jeep was too busy making army Jeeps.
D
No, no. It means that Best Buy can't buy anymore. For the rest of the year, whatever Best Buy has is all they're going to have.
B
Yes, because they're not making them for the consumer Market they're making.
C
Yeah, there's no continuous supply. The same stuff, Jeff. Supply chain.
A
They put a sticker on it that says data centers. I mean, it's the same thing. I have NAS drives. I buy special special western digital red drives for my network attached storage. Maybe they last a little bit longer or whatever. It's the same thing you do in a data center.
D
It's called oem. It doesn't have a box. It just doesn't have a box.
A
Yeah, it doesn't have a box.
C
Right. They're very similar.
A
How about the AI powered private school that costs $60,000 a year? 404 says students are being treated like guinea pigs inside an AI powered private school. It's called the Alpha School. Oh, it's paid members only. I can't read.
C
Yeah, well, that doesn't sound good. Huh?
A
The AI is generating faulty lessons that sometimes do more harm than good. And people pay sick $60,000 a year to send little Timmy to the AI.
C
This is very Silicon Valley to me. Or like Utah mystics like those are the two.
A
I wonder where the Alpha School is. Actually, I didn't.
B
I didn't.
C
If it's in Utah, like mic drop for the evening.
A
A school where kids crush academics in two hours, build life skills, school skills through workshops and thrive beyond the classroom. Campuses in Austin, San Francisco, Miami, Louisiana, Washington, D.C. dallas and other metropolitan areas.
C
A city thing for sure thing.
A
You just wish Dr. Phil. This is the whole pitch, though. Learn twice as much in two hours. So you only go to school for two hours. Oh, here's one. One of this is from Lulu, who's level two. One of the reasons I love Alpha is because we have our own currency that motivates us to do more work.
C
This feels so not research backed to me. Like, I. I just feel like you have to spend a certain amount of time with material to absorb it. Like, just point blank, full stop. Like, you can't automate everything.
A
Oh, there's one in Puerto Rico. That's for all the Bitcoin bros. Well.
C
Our villa could be there. That could be good.
A
Oh, yeah, Miami. That is the bad, the good and the ugly. Let us pause for station identification and then your picks of the week. And Jeff can relieve his L2 on.
B
My mountain of pillows.
A
Yes, by a mountain of pillows. In fact, Jeff, if you want to retire.
B
No, no, no, no, no.
A
Okay, we're almost there. This episode of Intelligent Machines is brought to you by. Oh, I love these guys. The spaceship. This is where we got Paris's new site. Secretly british from spaceship.com and by space mail, the professional email service from Spaceship. She has an email address. Now at Secretly British, a business email absolutely must. It's the easiest, the best way to look professional in every message you send. If you're still sending messages that say, you know, leomail.com that's not businesslike, it needs to have your company name in it. Give your emails the best chance of reaching the inbox, not the spam folder. That's why over 2000 users switch to spacemail every month. Switching is easy. Spacemail's super fast unbox process links your domain and email in seconds. So once you set up Secretly British, for instance, or you know, yourcompany.com you literally just press a button and now you're getting email at your corporate address. And once you're set up, spacemail keeps everything running smoothly, built in spam detection and a 99% uptime guarantee. What I love about Spacemail is new features are shaped by the users you make the roadmap. As a result, they're built around your needs. Space Mail has built in Calendar, an AI email assistant. There are iOS and Android apps, beautiful apps for email on the go. All of this chosen by Space Mail users. They said, we want an iOS app. Okay, you got it. We want an Android app. Okay, you got it. Space Mail is a key part of the wider Spaceship universe. That's where I register my domains now. And if you're a regular listener, you know Spaceship offers some of the best prices on domains. We were able to get it for half as much for for Secretly British for half as much as as we were finding it elsewhere. Plus you get all the add ons you might need, including VPNs, website builders, hosting and more. Whether you're building something big or launching your first idea, spacemail gives you a pro email address without the pro level price tag and with a 30 day free trial. Hey, you can start today at no cost. Visit spaceship.comtwit to see the exclusive offers. Discover why thousands have already made the move that spaceship. Spaceship.comTwit we thank you so much for your support Spaceship of everything we do here at Twit Emily. If you have a pick, you can use it now. If not.
C
I don't have a pick.
A
No pick. I have a pick. So when I use Claude, Claude will, when it's done thinking or wants me to give it some input, would pop up a little bubble on my screen. But sometimes I miss the bubble. So I've installed this, it's called Peon ping. Stop babysitting your terminal. Your p. Your peon pings you. The instant Claude code finishes or needs permissions. And actually it would work for anything.
C
Except for like, war craft or it is.
A
You want to hear it? Listen?
C
Yes.
A
Oh, my gosh, it's so great. So whenever I'm ready to work, like, it goes, work, work. Something you're doing.
C
That was such a joke in my family, like, me and my siblings would just repeat all these phrases.
A
This is from Warcraft, right? Yes.
C
Yeah, I love it.
A
Work, work. Wow. The good news is, you know, be happy too.
D
This is me and my friend circa 1992.
C
This is me and my siblings. Like, someone would be like, go unload the dishwasher. And they'd be like, work, work, work.
A
And when you click the orc's head, the peon's head, it would. It would say, what different things. Something you doing?
C
Can you send this to me, please?
A
It's so good. It's peon ping. But that. But that's not all. They have many, many others as well. They have all these different packs from helldivers from TF2. When you download this, once you set it up, you can rotate through all kinds of different sounds.
B
Sued?
A
I don't think so. And if they do, I hope. If the NPR sues, what's nice is they have that make the appropriate sound. So if it's. If it's like asking permission, it's what do you want? If it's. If it's an acknowledgement, it's. I can do that if it's annoyed me. Not that kind of orc. I know it's making me smile. They have a variety of sound packs of all kinds. I mean, oh, they have the human peasants from World Warcraft 3 ready to work. Yes, me lord. Off I go then. And they have Soviet engineers from Red Alert 2.
C
Yes, commander.
A
They have battle cruiser from Starcraft.
B
Make it happen.
A
Healing frequencies open. Sarah Kerrigan, also from Starcraft.
C
You may have time to play games, but I've got a job to do. That one gives me anxiety. That game is scary.
A
When I installed it, there were, I think, 120 of these. And you can add your own. So very easy to install. Really fun. It's dopey, but I love it.
B
Benito, I think you need this to insert comments in the show.
A
Ready to work. Ready work.
D
The thing about this is, in my.
C
Head, when I get an email from Benito, do you want to be in the show? I'm like, be happy to.
A
Ready to work.
D
Like this Stuff is owned by Microsoft now though, so I don't know because like Blizzard's own.
A
But you know what? It's still up. Go get it now while you can. That's all I can say. They have. Yes, they have. By your command. They have all the nerd stuff, everything. And then this also for Paris. Awesome. LLM reasoning failures. This is a curated list of things that LLMs screw up on. And it's just a lot of them. So if you're looking.
C
Bad quotes.
A
If you're looking. Yeah, for bad quotes, ammunition, hallucinations, all sorts of issues. Somebody's compiling this all. This is a common kind of trope on GitHub. Awesome. X. Right? Awesome. C libraries, awesome Python libraries. Awesome. Whatever. And so this is awesome. Lll reasoning failures.
C
I have a quick pick.
A
Oh, you found one.
C
No, it's just something I'm nerding out about right now. But not related to tech. Kind of the opposite.
A
No, it doesn't have to be tech. It could be terracotta tiles.
C
Yeah, I'm nerding out about that always. But basically I've got. I've realized there are different kinds of paper you can get. Like if anyone's into stationery, that these old paper mills in Japan and Europe.
A
Japanese papers?
C
Yeah, like Japanese paper, European paper. There's a French company I got some stuff from and they have different textures, different thicknesses. They are just been making the paper this way for hundreds of years.
B
In Germany.
C
Yeah. Yeah. Like maybe 100 years, maybe Japanese. It's 100 hundreds. I don't know.
A
Old thousands, I think. Yeah.
C
He has like a lost art and you can still buy all this stuff online. And I'm. I'm having a lot of fun with it and taking some notes on paper, which apparently Sam Altman still does if that makes it cool. I don't know, do you do a.
A
Bullet journal or what kind of journaling do you do?
C
I mostly do like kind of personal. Joe's Personal and professional journaling. Both kind of.
A
No, I think it's really good to do. Yeah.
C
But it's fun to mix it up with these new paper types. So I think that's a fun rabbit hole if anyone's looking for one for a long time.
A
I had a Hobonichi, which is a Japanese daytimer and they use beautiful, beautiful paper. I just love the feel of the paper.
C
Just the tactile experience is so nice.
A
Actually there's a 14 year old who just won a prize of $25,000 in the Thermo Fisher Junior Scientific Innovators Challenge because he created an origami fold of a classic Japanese Miura Ori pattern that can hold 10,000 times his own weight. This kid loves paper. It's so cute. You gotta read the article about all the folding he did.
C
It's awesome. Get him on the.
A
Look at. He's piling all this weight on his little folds.
C
We need him.
A
He won $25,000 because you know what? It holds 10,000 times its own weight. Good job, Miles Wu, Jeff, anything? You've already given us some of your picks.
B
Page 28 in the Gutenberg parenthesis. Credit for inventing paper has been given to Chinese man named kai Lun in AD105. By coincidence, in the same period, the codex appeared and the space disappeared in writing. However, the legend is ruined by discovery of paper fragments, fragments in China that date their creation to two or three centuries before him.
A
Wow.
B
Nonetheless, the Chinese get credit for discovering how to chop and hammer fabric, hemp, fishnets, and tree bark into cellulose soup, diluting clean water and then dipping a mold into mixture to come up with paper, its fibers overlapping and interlocking to create a smooth surface. They use paper for clothing wrapping, lanterns, fans, prayer ceremonies, kites, cups, and yes, the toilet.
C
He wrote that.
B
I wrote that.
C
Awesome.
A
So we have some paper lovers on the show today.
B
So my pick is our old Android friend Hugo Barra has kind of vibe coded a new company.
A
Yeah, I saw your link on this and I checked it out. I thought this is kind of interesting.
B
Super do is one of his favorite agents. He built with Dreamer.
A
And it's a vibe coded to do list.
B
Yeah, it's very, very Gina Trapani. It's. It's a to do list that then becomes an agent and does things that you want it to do. It doesn't merely stop at listing it and bugging you.
A
Yeah. It goes out and gets you the tools you need to get it done. For instance, if it sees an email.
B
Saying, you did it, it will check it off. Very cool.
A
And so now this is all about his. Really, what this is is a plug for his new company, Dreamer. Yeah, the tool, which is a kind of vibe coding platform.
B
Right.
A
So he wrote superdue in Dreamer. When I first read his post, I thought, why does he keep mentioning Dreamer? Now I understand.
B
That's why we built Dreamer. It's your home. Home for personal intelligence.
A
Yeah. I want to try it.
C
Cool.
A
It's interesting. Yes.
B
Well, this is the kind of thing that I've been arguing that the things that you do. Leo, with Claude and agents still requires a technical sophistication. I think the next level of this is when people can do it on a retail level without ever going into terminal, without having to install anything on a server. They make something that does what they want, they can share it. And I think that's where we're gonna see this explode.
C
That's where everything kind of goes. I think you're right. Like website design now you just drag and drop.
B
Yeah, exactly.
A
Yeah. You start with Nano Banana, you get an image, then you say, make that image into a website.
C
I have this compulsive thing in my head. When someone says nano Banana in my head, I go, nanner banana. And I have to restrain my myself from saying it out loud. I'm like, do I have Tourette's? I don't know.
A
I mentioned that I spent Monday coding. What I wrote was. I guess in a way it was kind of like writing a website. I had Claude code I bought many moons ago. I bought this E Ink display. It's a color E Ink display with a Raspberry PI on it. But it required coding to put anything on it and I never got around to doing it. So I had Claude code build me a web dashboard. It's E Ink. So I just unplugged plugged it. So it's not live, but because it's E Ink, it stays there. With the most recent episodes posted, how many subscribers we have, how many club members we have, all that stuff. Isn't that cool?
C
That's amazing.
A
It updates that. I have it set now only to update it once a day because it doesn't change that often. But I could have it do it more often.
B
So speaking of hardware and AI, line 125 Raspberry PI. I know I'm extending myself. When I asked to go off Raspberry PI stock soars 40% on the belief that Raspberry PI's will be used for as hardware for sure agents.
A
That makes sense.
C
Wait, is that also from your book?
B
No.
C
Okay. I'm like, so are you willing to stay on if we just read excerpts of your book?
B
I could read you excerpts from magazine.
C
You said page 145 or something.
A
The line. And actually Darren is saying don't start with Nano Banana because Google has another tool that's designed specifically for that called Stitch, which is where you would go to design with AI. I not aware of that. Thank you. So stitch.with google.com and design at the speed of AI transform ideas into UI designs for mobile and web applications.
B
Ah.
A
I Will use this because my next project is to write a Twitter. A client, a podcast client for Twit, just for our shows. Shouldn't be too hard. Maybe I'll try it with Stitch.
C
Impressive.
A
Thank you so much. Emily Forlini, so great to see you again. Emily writes at PC magazine. She's a senior reporter. Every quote verifiably human, I can promise you or her. Are you on Bluesky? Mostly Twitter. Where do you. Where do you hang your hat?
C
I have been doing a TikTok push recently. I'm kind of experimenting out loud. The videos are a very hit or miss, but if you'd like to follow me there and see how my experiment goes, that would be fun. You can also find me on Blue Sky. I don't know, I'm everywhere. I'm easy to find. Just search my name.
A
I. I like this. So what's your. That's your handle on. On the Tick?
C
Yeah. I think it's Emily Forlini. And then there's an underscore. There might have been one who beat me, but just searched my name. Yeah.
A
Just to eat that.
C
Right.
A
Let me search for Emily for Lainey.
C
Yeah. So I've been trying to post twice a week and pushing myself to figure out something I want to say twice a week, which is hard. So it doesn't always work. But I'm having probably the most fun on that platform and it's fun when people comment and stuff. So I would like to connect.
A
There it is. It's Emily Forlini with an underscore at the end.
C
Oh, no, look at me. See? It's so silly.
A
No, it's cute. There you are with Mike. I love it. This is great.
C
It's a work in progress. I'm trying to push myself and like figure out, you know, the tone of TikTok, the framing of the video, blah blah, blah. So if you want to be part of that journey, you can find me there.
A
I love it.
B
I need to start making TikToks. Just a.
A
It. It's so cool. I have one I made and everyone's.
C
Trying to not be embarrassed. It's just like, yeah, it's hard. Here's what I'm saying on Tick Tock, you know, it's.
A
It reminds me of when I first did a blog. It's like, this is so self centered. Why would anybody.
C
I know, I'm like, I look like such an idiot, but I don't. Whatever. I guess, right.
B
I love is how Tick Tock has made some phenomenal stars. Anna Lapwood, who plays the organ Was it? Cambridge now has a worldwide audience with albums and concerts.
A
It's amazing.
B
Le pronounced Lev, but spelled lay. The Icelandic American singer on the Olympics. On the short programs. I heard her song the other day.
A
There's that guy who does this. The sandwiches. Salt.
B
Salt. Salt.
A
Gym underscore. Hank, I think.
C
Yeah. Your son.
A
Yeah. Look at that mustache. It seems like it's. It's getting darker.
B
It's become a trademark. Yeah, so.
A
Oh, it is a trademark, let me tell you.
C
See, this page looks good. I should just have more food on mine.
A
Yeah, well, he figured, you know, that's what happened is he spent a lot of time figuring out, you know, what got the algorithm. The latest is about is the behind the scenes of his super bowl commercial.
C
Cool. Yeah. The problem is I'm busy and kind of phoning it in sometimes. Like the lighting, the sound, it's.
A
It's a full time.
C
Yeah.
A
Gig. And that's.
C
This is something I journaled about. For example, like, you know, New Year's resolution, setting goals.
A
Yeah.
C
It's like I'm gonna try to tick tock twice a week for three months and see what happens.
A
So the other thing that he did, which is smart is he also is on Instagram and I think nowadays both is probably good.
C
Right?
A
Yeah. Thank you, Emily. So great to see you.
C
You too.
A
Jeff Jarvis, professor of Journalistic Innovation Emeritus. Now I. Montclair State University up the road from Emily.
C
And you teach at Montclair State.
B
I'm a fellow.
C
Oh, you gotta connect.
B
Cooperative media. Yes, we should.
C
I live in Glen Ridge right there.
B
So I'm working on a new program we can't talk about yet, but it's very exciting and doing lots of things up there.
A
The Jersey Boys on Twitt or the Jersey Boy and Girl Jersey Strong.
B
My colleague Kerry Brown, I think that lives in Maplewood. A former professor with me at cuny and lots of. Lots of journals.
A
Nice.
C
So many. I know. You don't need to connect with me. There's a million people. So much of the New York media industry lives in this area, as I.
B
Call it, the Upper west side of New Jersey.
C
Yeah, totally. I know people work at cnn. Our editor in chief lives around here. I mean, there's like so many people.
A
Jeff's also the author, as you saw, of the Gutenberg parenthesis, which talks about paper and magazine, which talks about paper and his new and hot type, which talks about printing on paper. So there is a common thread, I guess. Thank you, Jeff.
B
Thank you.
A
Feel better. Paris will be back. I hope next week if the steroids hold out. Emily, we'll see you next on Tech News Weekly. A couple of weeks, I think.
C
Yeah, maybe next week. Maybe the week after. We'll see.
A
We don't know.
C
It's going to be fun.
A
Thank you everybody for joining us. We do Intelligent Mission Machines every Wednesday right about 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2200 UCC. You can watch us live if you're in the club, in the Club Discord, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. We also, of course, are on YouTube. You can watch us there. You can download episodes from our website, Twitt tv. Im Best thing to do though, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. You'll get it automatically as soon as we are done. Thank you everybody for being here. We'll see you next week on Intelligent Machines. Bye bye. Hello everybody. Leo laporte here. You know what a great gift would be, whether for the holidays or at just any time, A birthday, a membership in Club Twit. If you have a Twit listener in your family, somebody who enjoys our programming and you want to give them a nice gift and support what we do, visit TWiT TV club TWiT. They'll really appreciate it and so will we. Thank you. Twit TV Club Twit. I'm not a human being, not into this animal SC I'm an intelligent machine.
Host: Leo Laporte (A)
Co-Host: Jeff Jarvis (B)
Guest: Emily Forlini (C)
Date: February 19, 2026
This episode dives deep into the rapidly evolving world of AI agents, the industry stories shaping Silicon Valley and global technology, and the ethical and geopolitical dilemmas these technologies bring—especially the growing tension between the AI sector and military/government demands. The hosts break down major AI releases, dig into industry news and trends, debate the responsibilities AI companies carry, and discuss the consequences and unintended effects of current policies and product strategies.
“I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach… OpenAI has made strong commitments to enable me to dedicate my time to it and already sponsors the project. I’m working to make it a foundation. It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers and people that want a way to own their own data.” — Leo, [11:00]
“A lot of people have likened it to having a personal assistant working for them. Maybe not the smartest personal assistant. Here’s a question, maybe even not the most honest personal assistant…” — Leo, [13:03]
“I was asking something because I’ve been using AI a lot for design and creative stuff… and then it was just a Canva ad. It took up almost my whole screen… I was not impressed.” — Emily, [22:00]
“So Anthropic is not wrong saying, we don’t want to get involved in autonomous killing machines… there should always be a human in the kill decision.” — Leo, [49:37]
“I think the story of OpenClaw shows that just putting code out there—if it solves a real problem—still has the power to change an industry overnight.”
— Emily Forlini, [8:46]
“Mission schmission, whatever that is… The whole mission of OpenAI is long gone.”
— Leo Laporte, [18:01]
“Advertising built on all that information creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don’t have the tools to understand, let alone prevent.”
— Quoted from Zoe Hitzig, discussed by Leo, [25:00]
“There should always be a human in the kill decision.”
— Leo Laporte on AI weapon policies, [49:37]
“You can’t automate everything… You have to spend some time with material to absorb it. Full stop.”
— Emily Forlini on AI-powered schools, [151:42]
“This stuff's moving so fast… You put a pin in, and five minutes later, nobody needs that anymore.”
— Leo Laporte, [20:02]
The episode is fast-moving, lively and humorous, tinged with skepticism and critical analysis of industry trends, hype, and ethical dilemmas. The hosts bring deep, firsthand experience, telling stories with wit and a sense of both excitement and caution about the future.
Episode 858 of Intelligent Machines offers a sweeping tour of the state of AI—from the explosive success of open-source agents to the complex, often fraught intersections of ethics, military policy, industry strategy, and creative expression. It’s an unfiltered yet deeply informed look at how rapidly AI is changing every facet of technology—and why it matters more than ever to keep both eyes (and both feet) on the ground as we move forward.
Listen for:
Highly recommended for anyone wanting a smart, wide-ranging overview of today’s AI news and undercurrents—with clear, honest talk about what’s exciting, what’s troubling, and where things might go next.