TWiG 787: We Hear for You - Meta Connect, Altman's Manifesto

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Week in Google (Audio) - Episode TWiG 787: We Hear for You - Meta Connect, Altman's Manifesto

Introduction and Personal Updates

The episode opens with host Leo Laporte rejoining after a vacation, greeting regulars Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. The trio shares personal anecdotes, including a recent meetup at Andres Restaurant in New York City. Paris humorously recounts how her father inadvertently became famous in Peru after being featured in a TikTok video, leading to amusing interactions due to his resemblance to a celebrity figure ([05:08]). Leo also mentions his son, Salt Hank, making an appearance on the Today Show to showcase their new pickle venture, the Salt Lovers Club, highlighting the blend of personal and professional lives within the team ([06:40]).

Meta Connect Keynote Highlights

The primary focus shifts to Mark Zuckerberg's announcements at the Meta Connect keynote. The hosts discuss Zuckerberg's unveiling of new VR hardware—lightweight glasses weighing only 100 grams, eliminating the need for bulky battery packs, and featuring augmented reality capabilities ([12:45]). Despite the futuristic showcase, there was a noticeable absence of mentions about Facebook, indicating Meta's strategic pivot away from its original social media platform ([14:48]).

Zuckerberg vs. Altman's Visions on AI

A significant portion of the discussion contrasts Zuckerberg's perspectives with those of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. While Zuckerberg emphasizes building an open and accessible social operating system through VR and AI integration, Altman's manifesto presents a more ambitious and, at times, controversial vision for AI's role in society. Jeff notes Altman's comparison of societal progress to building a "cathedral of AI," expressing skepticism about the feasibility and ethical implications of such grandiose plans ([13:35],[17:36]).

Leo commends Zuckerberg for his authentic and developer-focused presentation, contrasting it with Altman's more enigmatic and "doomer" stance on AI's future ([19:08]). Paris adds that Altman's approach, driven by substantial venture capital, requires a higher degree of scrutiny and accountability, especially given the potential societal impacts of AI technologies ([41:11]).

AI in Society: Opportunities and Concerns

The hosts delve into the broader implications of AI advancements. Sam Altman envisions a future where AI serves as personal assistants, virtual tutors, and tools for solving complex global challenges. However, Jeff and Paris express concerns about the overhyping of AI capabilities, the potential for misuse, and the disparity between optimistic projections and realistic outcomes ([38:47],[45:26]). They highlight the need for a balanced perspective that acknowledges both the transformative potential of AI and the ethical, social, and economic challenges it presents.

Google’s AI Innovations and Tools

Transitioning to Google-specific news, the podcast covers Google’s Notebook LM—a tool that allows users to ingest content and generate audio dialogues or summaries using AI. The hosts experiment with the tool, noting its capability to accurately summarize Jeff's upcoming book, "The Web We Weave," while also discussing its limitations in terms of maintaining conversational authenticity ([65:27]-[73:43]).

Additionally, they touch upon recent updates like Google's redesigned video editor with AI-powered presets, the integration of Gemini AI into corporate workspaces and Pixel Buds, and enhancements to Google Photos’ video editing features that include cloud removal capabilities ([85:15]-[97:37]).

Cloudflare’s Anti-AI Bot Tools

Jeff introduces Cloudflare’s new tools designed to block AI bots from scraping websites, addressing a growing concern about unauthorized data harvesting. This move by Cloudflare is positioned as a response to services like LinkedIn and Lionsgate allowing AI models to access their content, raising questions about data privacy and intellectual property in the age of generative AI ([89:07]-[91:21]).

Societal Reflections and Historical Parallels

The conversation includes reflections on historical technological shifts, drawing parallels between the advent of the printing press and the current AI revolution. Jeff recalls discussions about how technologies like the phonograph transformed society by altering communication and information dissemination, emphasizing that while technology propels progress, it also brings unforeseen challenges ([35:48]-[38:57]).

AI-Generated Content and Human Connection

A segment explores the capabilities of AI-generated podcasts, where the hosts experiment with AI tools that replicate their conversational style. While acknowledging the technical prowess of these tools, Jeff and Paris argue that human elements like perspective, emotional nuance, and storytelling depth remain irreplaceable aspects of traditional podcasting ([65:27]-[73:43]).

Final Topics: Cards Against Humanity vs. Elon Musk

In the closing segments, the hosts discuss the unexpected lawsuit filed by Cards Against Humanity against Elon Musk's SpaceX. Originally, Cards Against Humanity had purchased land intended for the U.S.-Mexico border wall as a satirical protest. SpaceX began using the property for its Starbase industrial complex without permission, prompting the legal action. The hosts humorously advocate for Cards Against Humanity's efforts to protect their symbolic protest space against corporate overreach ([113:07]-[115:21]).

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with lighter banter, reflecting on the evolving landscape of AI in media, technology adoption, and societal impact. The hosts express a mix of optimism and caution regarding AI's future, emphasizing the importance of responsible development and ethical considerations as technology continues to advance.

Notable Quotes:

• "This is Meta Connect. It's their developer conference. But everything Meta does is driven by the revenue from Facebook and Instagram." — Leo Laporte ([03:46])

• "AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants to carry out specific tasks on behalf of, like coordinating medical care on your behalf." — Sam Altman's Manifesto, discussed by the hosts ([37:50])

• "It's a mix of optimism and skepticism, which is what we need when dealing with transformative technologies like AI." — Jeff Jarvis ([41:44])

• "We are in a revolution here where AI is starting to mirror human interactions, but it still lacks the depth and authenticity of real conversations." — Paris Martineau ([66:17])

Conclusion and Takeaways

Episode TWiG 787 offers an in-depth exploration of current developments in AI and Big Tech, with a particular focus on Meta's strategic shifts and Sam Altman's ambitious visions for AI's role in society. Through engaging discussions, the hosts balance enthusiasm for technological advancements with critical insights into their potential implications, underscoring the necessity for ethical frameworks and responsible innovation in shaping the future.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Twig this Week in Google. Jeff's here, Paris is here. I'm back from vacation. We'll talk about Mark Zuckerberg's announcements at the Meta Connect keynote this morning and compare and contrast it to Sam Altman's A Little Bit Weird AI Manifesto. Then we'll find out why Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk. All that more coming up on twig. After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay paid off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan vs Verizon and at&t@t mobile.com Keep and switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says Happy Friday. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday. Random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that. Get more with Geico Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libson ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiG. This Week in Google. Episode 787 recorded Wednesday, September 25, 2024 we here for you. It's time for TWiG. This Week in Google, the show where we cover not just Google, but the Internet. We cover, ladies and gentlemen, the web we weave. That is the book from Mr. Jeff Jarvis. Professor Jeff Jarvis. He is the Tao Knight professor of Journalistic Innovation Emeritus Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. But do you have anything else to announce yet?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, not yet. Soon.

[Leo Laporte]

So we're gonna keep giving you that old title. Good to see you, Jeff. Missed you guys so much. Paris Martino is also here. She's back from Croatia. She reports on youth issues at the Information for the weekend, which is the best part of the information, I think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We never shared our pictures of the three of us, did we?

[Leo Laporte]

I have them right here if you want to see them. Let me pull them up. So we. So on the way out of town, I stopped by New York City and we had a little meetup. Paris, Jeff and I, at.

[Paris Martineau]

A place with a name that we can Jose.

[Leo Laporte]

Andres Restaurant in New York City. It's a great Greek restaurant, actually. It's perfect for your.

[Paris Martineau]

Leah wore a shirt with a lot of avocados on it that all the ladies loved.

[Leo Laporte]

They did. And I said, do you have avocados at this restaurant? And they said, now we do.

[Paris Martineau]

No, I posted it in the discord.

[Leo Laporte]

I. I have it on the screen. Do you not see it?

[Benito Gonzalez]

Benito, I need to switch.

[Leo Laporte]

You need to switch.

[Benito Gonzalez]

You need to switch.

[Leo Laporte]

I need to switch.

[Paris Martineau]

The power is in your hands, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

I did switch. You don't. What do you see now?

[Paris Martineau]

I see the web weave.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I need to switch to this.

[Paris Martineau]

There we are.

[Leo Laporte]

There's three of them. I don't know which one's best, but Paris. We had to get Paris to do the selfie because only she's young enough to know how to press the button and take a picture.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I gotta do the AI thing that picks the best one of each of you and see what it looks like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I could do that in the Google. In the Google. I like that one. That's cute.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, we.

[Leo Laporte]

It was really fun to see the two of you have lunch. I'd never met Paris in person before.

[Paris Martineau]

Crazy that we had never met in person, given all the hours we've spent talking to each other.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that was really cool. And then you went off to Croatia. I know you've been back since then, but you had a good time.

[Paris Martineau]

I had a lovely time. It was super fun.

[Leo Laporte]

A lot of good. Became famous in Peru while we were gone.

[Paris Martineau]

He did. Inexplicably, my dad was caught in a TikTok video by a bunch of Peruvian bystanders who believe that he was a celebrity. And he really decided to eat it up, and I love him for that.

[Leo Laporte]

They're Not. They weren't fully wrong. I mean, after all, they. Your parents were dressed in dinnerware.

[Paris Martineau]

They were ready for a, you know, wedding.

[Leo Laporte]

They had security in shades around them. Look at these guys in the shades. I mean, I would have assumed he was famous, too.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's your mom in the beautiful. That's my mom.

[Paris Martineau]

Like, come on, let's go.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So the first, the first is she's smiling the first time. By the fifth time she's had it.

[Paris Martineau]

She's tapping him on the shoulder. By the time we get here, right there, right now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Now she's pissed.

[Leo Laporte]

This is how fame happens. This is how fame happens. Just that simple. Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, I love. Probably is in comparison to every person.

[Leo Laporte]

But he does look famous. He's wearing a tux. He's got guys in sunglasses and earpieces around him, ushering him off.

[Paris Martineau]

So funny.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought he was famous.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Beautiful.

[Paris Martineau]

He is famous to me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really great. That's a. That's a nice event. Speaking of Fame, my son, Mr. Salt Hank is going to be on the Today show tomorrow with Oda and Jenna or whatever. Hoda, right? That's her name. Hoda. 10:00 at a.m. on the Today's show.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is he going to make anything with them?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he's cooking. I'm not sure what I told him. Make pickles. Because we have a new. He and I are in a pickle venture.

[Paris Martineau]

Plug the family business.

[Leo Laporte]

It's called the Salt Lovers Club. This podcast thing's never going to take off, so I have to get in the pickle business.

[Paris Martineau]

I saw organically some Salt Hank content come across my Twitter feed the other day. Someone just posted Making Salt Hank Meatball parms for my beautiful friends.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go.

[Paris Martineau]

And I was like, wow.

[Leo Laporte]

My son, the sandwich king.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

His new cookbook comes out in about 10 days. It's called Salt Hank A5 Napkin Situation. You can order it on Amazon or wherever you get your books. It is a beautiful cookbook, by the way. It's funny because, Jeff, I have a copy of the Web. We Leave also available in bookstores everywhere. But I don't have a copy of Saul Hank's cookbook.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Your own son. You're not blurbing. Geez.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not blurbing on my own son.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did anybody blurb him? Did they do blurbs in cookbooks?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Big names blurbed him.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Gordon Ramsay. Wow. Oh, yeah. He's got. He's got some. He's got friends in high places as.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They see, like, how many pictures are in it.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that how it's all pictures? It's, It's. It really isn't a cookbook. It's a picture post.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So that's expensive to produce.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's Simon and Schuster, baby. They spent a lot of money. He's doing a book tour.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

They. They are. They. Book tours went away when I was a young. But they. They're. They're doing it with him. So keep your eye peeled, Mr. Hank. All right, let's talk news, Google News. Google's getting sued in the eu. Or is it Google suing? I think it's Google suing Microsoft in the eu, claiming they have a monopoly. All right, Microsoft charges egress fees if you want to leave Azure and Google used to charge egress fees and then decided not to charge egress fees, and now they're really upset, so they got the EU to go after Microsoft for charging egress fees.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Egress from what?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if, for instance, I were to charge you, Jeff, to no longer be on this podcast, that would be an egress fee, and it wouldn't be right. But, you know, who does do that? A lot of people do that if you want to get your data out of the cloud. Often it costs you money to get your data out of the cloud. So let's see. I thought we should do some Google News, but now back to Stanley Tumblrs.

[Paris Martineau]

After that, you know, long foray into hard, serious news coverage.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you have a pink Stanley tumbler, Paris?

[Paris Martineau]

No, I'm an A Walla girl myself.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look at that. You're not with it. Apparently, Stanley's pink tumbler was all the rage. And now that Barbie is celebrating its 65th anniversary. Stanley Every day. Oh, you missed it last week. Shoot. See, this is why you can't go on vacation.

[Paris Martineau]

Important stuff like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Selling Stanley quenchers to honor different Barbies on the 6th. You like them?

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know. I just think Quenchers is a very funny name for a product to quench your thirst.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the actual Barbie with a. With a quencher all. All her own.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow. Women can have it all.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at that. You can. You can. Oh, look. And a cowboy. And a cowboy can have a. Have it all, too.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay. I think they're so silly. They're too large.

[Leo Laporte]

They're gigantic.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, they are.

[Leo Laporte]

And they look dopey because they have this little tiny hole at the bot for putting in your. Your cup holder. I think that's.

[Paris Martineau]

Dopey I don't like that. Do you guys have Stanley's?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I have a. Off brand something. I got a Dicks. Oh, no, that's.

[Paris Martineau]

It's the cool one.

[Leo Laporte]

We both have the same thing.

[Paris Martineau]

I like it because it's got a straw in it.

[Leo Laporte]

It does, but it doesn't look like.

[Paris Martineau]

It has a straw.

[Leo Laporte]

It. It looks like just a. A wide mouth frog. But if you unscrew it, you'll see the hidden straw.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Inside. And it holds like 800 gallons of water.

[Paris Martineau]

I have a tinier one for New York City bags, but it's quite good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, here's our Barbie segment. Really? We're moving fast. Essilor Luxotica. Did you watch the Meta thing this morning? No, we streamed it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was. Are you buying those glasses?

[Leo Laporte]

The new. I have the Meta. Ray Bans.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, they just. They just. They didn't announce. They just.

[Leo Laporte]

They're going to continue their partnership and they are going to add new features, including a translation. Real time translation.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. How many times have we been told that. That someone's going to add that? I'll believe it when I see it.

[Leo Laporte]

To Meta's credit, Mark Zuckerberg was live on stage and did actually do a real translation with them with a Mexican UFC fighter who. He spoke in Spanish. Mark spoke in English and they had a conversation. It was a weird conversation because you say your thing. Hello, I'm very pleased to meet you. How's the knee? And then he has to stand there and wait while it goes hola. And then he says his thing and then you have to stand there awkwardly and wait. It's not that much fun.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I've done. I've done events with. With simultaneous translation.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And then I've done events with. Not simultaneous, where you have to wait in the event.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And it's. It's hard. Yeah, it's very hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

To do that. Was. What was Mark wearing? That's what we all want to know now.

[Leo Laporte]

He was wearing a black T shirt and black pants. Despite the fact that Mark looked like he'd been spending some time in the gymnasium, he. It was a loose fitting black T shirt.

[Paris Martineau]

So he wore a shirt that said OT Zuck, OT nil. Which what is that people assumed was a joke referring to the phrase OT Caesar, ot nil, which means, I think in Latin, either Caesar or nothing. So it would say either either Zuck or nothing.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what?

[Paris Martineau]

I was joking that he should get a shirt that says zuck tua.

[Leo Laporte]

But ET2A zuck.

[Paris Martineau]

That's also good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. ET2 zuck. Zuck has used Latin before. He likes Latin jokes. Showing off his, his H at education, I guess.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, a quarter thereof.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But he took, he didn't even have a whole year, did he?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Did he have the gold chain? Did he have the fancy hair? I gotta hear this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

He had very, very curly mop of hair. I give him a lot. Okay. I. Here's what I would. My takeaway from this event was we wanted to watch because I was curious what they were going to do with VR and he said, you know, we got this thing, it's not ready by any means, but this is what we're working on. It's 100 grams, doesn't need a battery pack, has a little puck to drive it, but it doesn't need any additional stuff. It does augmented reality. It does a lot of stuff. He showed people wearing it. He said there's only three in existence. He showed people wearing it. But he's. But it was like, this is way down the road. But it was, I, I was there to see that and to see what he's going to do with llama, their AI. But the thing that I came away with. And you, you've, you, you've written about Facebook. You, you, you've, you've been inside is. He didn't mention Facebook at all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Meta Connect. It's their developer conference. But all everything Meta does is driven by the revenue from Facebook and Instagram. One brief mention of Instagram because they'll. You'll be able to use AI on Instagram. No mentions at all about Facebook And I think that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's not. I owe. How much, how much is Search as search mentioned in IO?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's a good point. I, I feel like though this is Meta successfully pivoting away from their.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I think, I think you're right.

[Leo Laporte]

They're troubled. Core business and I think troubled because people are very privacy focused, but also because nobody under the age of 40 uses meta anymore. Right. It's not.

[Paris Martineau]

It uses Facebook.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, Facebook.

[Paris Martineau]

Part of the issue. Yeah. Is that nobody really uses the core Facebook app or at least young people are not using it. And my prediction is that Instagram will eventually go the same way. And you can see it based on the way that Instagram is starting to resemble the Facebook app. It's bloated with features. Every time I open it, I get a new pop up telling me to do something with AI or try this feature or click over here. It is feeling more and more like the Facebook menus of yore, which is, I don't know, kind of sad because the app used to be very much against visual clutter back in its heyday.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it is a shame. I thought I liked Instagram. I think that they suffered severely from TikTok envy as well. Right. And became TikTok, as Twitter is and.

[Paris Martineau]

A million other things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and, and yeah, but. But I think what Mark has basically implied. They talked about Horizons and showed off Horizons, their social operating system that you do in VR. And I think that he. He is, despite we might. What we might have thought, he is still all in on VR and virtual environments.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, it's hard not to be when you've spent as many.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Tens of hundreds of millions, billions as he has.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But I think, I think met. My argument is constantly that I think Meta AI is the sleeper here. I think Llama is good. The fact that it's open and free and open source. Open, freely available. Call it that. He's a spoiler and I think that's going to be important.

[Leo Laporte]

They talked a lot about. Yeah, they talked a lot about Llama. He didn't use. It was interesting. He didn't use the phrase, which I kind of faulted him for, of open. This being the open source AI. I don't. I don't think he said open source at all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, that also has cooties now because people are fearing that that's how bad guys will use it. So you want to call it something else. It's open availability or whatever they call it.

[Leo Laporte]

He did claim. I don't know if there's a way of justifying this, but he claimed it was the most used AI today.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's free. So is Gemini.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but it's on. But, but I mean, I have Llama on a. On computers and stuff because you can download it and you can use the models free locally. I mean, I don't know if it's true. He said it.

[Paris Martineau]

I wonder where that's coming from. I wonder if that's weasel words somehow related. There was a weasel word, you know, embedded in Instagram search. So is it technically doing an AI powered search when I type in Leo laporte's Instagram handle? Maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe he does claim there'll be a lot more AI in Instagram. Stephen is asking in our Twitch stream, what's Llama? I. We shouldn't assume everybody knows what Llama is. LLAMA is Meta's large language model, their AI comparable to what Apple Intelligence is or Google's Gemini or what else? Anthropic open AIs chat GPT llamas, the meta version of that. And very similar. It's an LLM. It's very similar. Get it? LLM. Anyway, I, I, the most interesting thing to me was that how honestly I felt like Mark was very authentic, I think credible.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He's. Well, he's also, you know, I'm done with politics. It's a real unapologizing. Yeah, yeah, I'm me now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And to hell with all of you. I'm rich. I'm doing what I want to do and that's that. So he's, he gives no Fs. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And while Apple is, you know, highly polished pre produced product releases, this was very much down to earth. He's talking to developers. As a developer, I kind of liked it. It was refreshing. This is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You have not liked him for a long time.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I think he's, I thought this.

[Paris Martineau]

Was his lot of money rehabbing his public Persona and it's through things like these dorky, these outfits he's wearing, the photos and videos you've seen of him doing dorky stuff like being on that sunfoil or grilling meats. This has all been part of a carefully orchestrated attempt to rehab his image. And folks, the New York Times, including Mike Isaac have reported, I believe quite a bit on this. And it seems to be working. People like you are suddenly pro Zuck again.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Enamored of him.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm not enamored of him.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You don't walk on the beach with Zuck.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, I just, I, I feel like. Well, does, is it, does he deserve a second chance?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think so. Paris?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I mean, I don't. Look, Paris is silent.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris is, she's getting.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris disagrees.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like a second chance. For what?

[Leo Laporte]

Because, well, for so long we've kind of made fun of him, mocked.

[Paris Martineau]

What has changed about him? He's still a billionaire tech CEO in charge of a product that is highly controversial, beholden to shareholders in ways that are that often put it its interests perhaps not always in alignment with those.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Of its users, but he's 100 times better than Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen. Yeah, that's the thing.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Compare it.

[Paris Martineau]

Comparing him to the worst guys. Anybody.

[Leo Laporte]

Guys are the guys.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He ate the worst guy by a long shot. Now that's the point. People were trying to paint him as the worst guy. No, no, no, no, no, no. There's far worse than Zuck.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Well, I mean, Zuck was also involved in some pretty terrible stuff like Myanmar and things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And so, in fact, somebody in. That's Benito Gonzalez, our technical producer and actually full producer and technical. What do you call it? Technical director. Director. Switch pusher. He's the guy who's switching the show, as somebody did say in one of the streams during the Meta Connect thing is. Yeah, as long as you forget the genocide in Myanmar. Do you think Facebook has moved past that? I think they've tried.

[Paris Martineau]

They're really trying to move past it.

[Leo Laporte]

They just canceled rt. Right. They pushed RT off of Metta. Off Facebook.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, but again, I think. I think it's a very important moment when he said, I'm done with politics. I'm not doing politics. I'm done apologizing. He's saying that last few weeks and he's basically just saying, take me as I am. This is what we do. This is what I care about. I have the resources to do what I want. And I think that he's probably wishing he done that long ago.

[Leo Laporte]

He also, at the end, he stated the company values and.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, that's kind of new.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I really feel like I want to give him credit. Maybe it is all a PR plan and all of that stuff. Certainly there's been things that Facebook's done that are appalling. The thing he's doing in Hawaii ain't so great. Buying up the ancestral lands secretly and to build his giant. I don't know what hidey hole. But I think he is trying hard to be, you know, he. They once again, let me see if I could find this statement of values, because I thought they were pretty good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I'd like. I'd like to see that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And the fact that he even talked about values was, is this Move fast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We build and learn faster than anyone else.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, that's the thing. He kind of dumped that whole move fast and break things.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's still a culture at Meta. That's still up. So I guess he's got.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but. Well, maybe he needs to fix.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Update the website.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me see if there's a lot of coverage of this. Mostly of his shirt. That's the problem with doing something like that. Right. You get a lot of attention for. For your shirt and not what you're saying.

[Paris Martineau]

Probably what he wanted also.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it. I don't know. I think he. I, you know, maybe I'm misreading him, but I genuinely felt like one of the things he wanted to emphasize is, look, we're making a product that's better. And he said it better than Apple's Vision Pro at a tenth of the cost. We're bringing VR to people. We believe connection is important to people. I think he's always believed that. We've decided to offer this even less expensive Quest 3s, which is the same price as the original Quest 2.299.99. They're adding features to the Ray Ban glasses. And he really, he said, you know, I wish I could get the exact quote at the end.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'd love to hear that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I'll tell you what, let me. I can find.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Scrub through the video.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I could find the event. We unfortunately decided not to, as we usually do when we cover these kinds of things, not to stream their video, but just to stream Micah and me talking about their video, asking people to watch it. In hindsight. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Because they've been trying to take you guys down for cover.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple has. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Which is ridiculous.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. It's a PR event, for Christ's sakes.

[Paris Martineau]

Like what?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's also fair use. I mean, we're doing news commentary on a newsworthy story now, to be fair. Facebook's not said anything. I just. But we've had such trouble with Twitch and YouTube. I don't want to get banned forever. And that's the threat both Twitch and YouTube offer. So I don't, I don't want to do that. Let me see if I can find. Here it is. Mark's vision. Go ahead to the. No, no, no. This is after Mark left a lot of, A lot of people pretending to be. I, I do like this. Let me see if I could. He's talking about some of the things you can do and sensors that we designed and powered by. This is the Orion glasses that. They're baggy, top of mixed reality generation.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Platform and have what looks like normal looking glasses.

[Leo Laporte]

You're looking at the culmination of decades. It's a cut down. Oh, it is. That's the problem. This is a five minute. Oh, I don't want to cut down.

[Benito Gonzalez]

No, no, that's the full. That's the full.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it? Let me play it again then. See, I guess it is. They wouldn't be having a countdown at the beginning of a cut down. God, we cut away a lot earlier, didn't we? He. He did. Exactly an hour. So let me go into for hours. There he is. By the way, don't you think he's cute?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Speaking of AI and glasses.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there was open source AI it was on the wall. I missed that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

Working on the future.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And like, I'm sitting on your couch next to you as a hologram and we're just the manufacturer.

[Leo Laporte]

They're calling these holograms, by the way.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Great. Another misused sci fi term.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

So we are going to use a list of sci fi terms kicking around, and they throw a dart at one every year and they're like, which one are we going to do today that we.

[Leo Laporte]

That we need to. But we're also going to work with a handful of partners externally to make sure that we. I don't know if I can find his values statement.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'll look for it for the future.

[Leo Laporte]

And like, I don't remember that part.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Of technology, there is competition of ideas for what the future should look like.

[Leo Laporte]

Life.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And at Meta, we're trying to build a future that is more open, more.

[Leo Laporte]

Accessible, more natural and more about human connection.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is the continuation of the values.

[Leo Laporte]

And ideas that we have brought to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The apps and technology that we have built.

[Paris Martineau]

Accessible, natural.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Natural human connection.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, then collectively, us at Meta and all of you here today have the ability to shape both the industry and.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The world in even more positive and bigger ways in the next generation of computers.

[Leo Laporte]

Except that his damn shirt says Zucker. Nothing. I would buy it except for that. You know, Zuck, maybe consider your choices. Hold on.

[Jeff Jarvis]

For all of you who are building.

[Leo Laporte]

With us, thank you for being on this journey with us.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's kind of a Jack Dorsey.

[Leo Laporte]

I hope you enjoy the rest of your. It is kind of a up yours. But, you know, I was pretty much impressed by that vision. Weren't you? I mean, it seemed. Of course, now this is going to. We're going to take a break and this is going to take us to Sam Altman's piece about AI. And there's. There's two mes on this, and I bet there is on you too. One where I want to believe and say, yeah, you're right, this is great. This is a new world we're entering where we could be connected, we could be positive. And yeah, that's just a PR ploy to make yourself a billionaire.

[Jeff Jarvis]

More money, you know, but the difference is that Altman. And we'll talk about this when you get to Altman, but I think he's a doomer and he's presenting this. I'm going to be in charge of the whole world. Zach is saying, I'm not going to be in charge of the whole world. This is what we're going to do. And use it, don't use it. This is where we are. I think that's a huge difference. I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

You're kind of more in my camp that this is a reformed news. Well, we'll talk about that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Scares me some.

[Leo Laporte]

And yeah, we were. Let's talk about this Sam Altman piece, which I think we probably could read in its entirety because it's not very long.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There's also a great tech crunch analysis of it, of what's believable and what's hype.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Really well done. That's a good way to go through it.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll get to that in just a second. You're watching this week in Google. Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau brought to you today by Bit Warden. Hey, there they are. I like that. Do that again. That was good. Whoa. What was the. What was the. Wasn't there a meme where there was a hamster who was scared?

[Paris Martineau]

Like a meerkat or something?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, it's like that. Yeah. Our show today, brought to you by Bit Warden, the password manager, offering a cost effective solution that could dramatically improve your chances of staying safe online. Everyone knows you need a password manager. I recommend Bit Warden. It's open source. I love that because they're open source. Had a lot of contributions from community that have made it better and better and better. They're always adding to it. And because it's open source, it's free forever for individuals. Plus, as an individual, you can even host your own vault if you don't want to have them hosted for you. I let them host it because I think they're going to do a better job than I would. It's just the way a password manager should be. They've just announced the fifth annual Open Source Security Summit. It's coming up to starts tomorrow, September 26th. This year's headline speakers include security analyst Karen Elazari, journalist, author Kim Zetter, Love Kim NFL C so oh, this should be interesting. Thomas Malado it's free. You can register right now and attend virtually. Bitwarden.com Open Source Security Summit bitwarden.com Open Source Security summit A great time to learn about the future of open source security solutions, especially as the holidays approach. This is when the bad guys go crazy because everybody's going online to do your shopping. You need security right now. You need Bit Warden. Bitwarden has announced they're expanding their inline autofill capabilities with the bitwarden browser extension. It includes cards and identities. It is the simplest, easiest way to fill in forms securely. I Love it. And this enhancement benefits all users. It means you got a more secure interaction with web forms. Because you can't be phished if the form isn't legitimate, Bitwarden won't fill it in. That includes payment details, contact info, addresses and more. It's a great tool to fight phishing. Bitwarden empowers enterprises, developers and individuals to safely store and share sensitive data with a transparent open source approach to password management. Bitwarden makes it easy for users to extend robust security practices to all their online experiences. You need Bitwarden in enterprise. You can get started with Bit Warden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan as an individual gets started free forever across all devices. Unlimited passwords, pass keys [e-mail] Twitter we love bit Warden. I'm a happy Bit Warden user. So is Steve Gibson. You ought to try this for your home and for your office. Bit warden.com Twitter we thank bit Warden so much for their support of this week in Google. Do you want to start with the tech crunch exegesis or line 85? Line 85. All right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So what Sarah Perez takes, it takes who's good into slices and she says.

[Leo Laporte]

Catapults past founder mode into God mode.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Which is just really true.

[Leo Laporte]

With his latest post. First of all, why did Sam Altman write this and post it?

[Jeff Jarvis]

He's raising $8 billion on $150 billion valuation. Well, that would raising hundreds of billions of dollars for his worldwide AI thing. Yeah, that's why he's doing it.

[Paris Martineau]

So we're in a generation now also where the top CEOs of these tech companies are all posters. They've all got poster brain. And this is Sam Altman's post.

[Leo Laporte]

Did Mark Andreessen start this? Jeff? I mean, he certainly was one of the people who wrote these. They're practically manifestos. But I have to say, as I'm reading it, I'm thinking, yeah, I don't disagree. Sam writes, in the next couple of decades, we'll be able to do things that have seemed like magic to our grandparents. I saw one snarky comment that. Oh yeah, just taken that from. Was it Isaac Asimov's statement that any, any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic? Okay, but it's true.

[Paris Martineau]

Grandmother probably didn't know what the Internet was before she died a couple years ago. I don't think the Internet would be magic to her.

[Leo Laporte]

The thing, what we're doing right now would seem magic.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

To people 100 years ago. You are in New York City Jeff's in New Jersey, I'm in California. And we're sitting together talking about something and broadcasting.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Not one of us can actually explain what. How this all works.

[Leo Laporte]

And we don't know how it works.

[Paris Martineau]

And I have no interest in figuring it out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Ignorance is magic.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think Sam's absolutely right. We are going. We already are. And in the next few decades, we'll be able to continue to do things that would seem like magic. This phenomenon is not new, he says, but it will be newly accelerated. This is the thing that is certainly what people like Sam Altman, the CEO and founder of OpenAI, have been pushing with AI. People have become dramatically more capable. People have become dramatically more capable over time. We can already accomplish things now that our predecessors would have believed to be impossible. We're more capable. And this, to me, was the paragraph I really thought was interesting. Not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and way more capable than any one of us. And this speaks to what you were saying, Benito. We don't need to know how a television set works or a car or a jet airplane works. We benefit because of the infrastructure society provides us.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Same with a steam engine.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, but. Yes, same with a steam engine.

[Paris Martineau]

Isn't smarter than a person. It is better at a specific task.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Same here.

[Leo Laporte]

I do well, okay, so.

[Paris Martineau]

And it is created by a person.

[Leo Laporte]

That might be the thing that has changed over the last hundred years. Is it? I think some of the things we're seeing, it's not inappropriate to call them, you know, the infrastructure. Society is smarter and more capable. He says, in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's David Reinberger's argument that. That the room is smarter than anyone in it. The Internet.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think that's. Yeah, I think that's been true of society for a long time. Print led us there. But don't get me started on Gutenberg language.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Let us there, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes, of course, none of the tribe is better at hunting the elk than one guy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, this has been the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is the hubris of the present tense.

[Paris Martineau]

But I think that part and part of what we're about to get to in this is the folly, I think, of this mindset is centering the technology rather than centering the creators of the technology and the users of the technology. The next paragraph says it won't happen.

[Leo Laporte]

Stop, stop, stop. I haven't finished this paragraph. Our grandparents and the generations that came before them. I'll Let you do the next one. Our parent, grandparents and the generations that came before them built and achieved great things. So they're saying exactly what you guys are saying. They contributed to the scaffolding of human progress, that we all benefit from AI. Now this is where we start to transition. AI will give people tools to solve hard problems and help us add new struts to that scaffolding that we couldn't have figured out on our own. This is the first statement in the whole thing that you might say, whoa, hold on. Really?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. And you have folded proteins and. And new molecules and. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The story of progress will continue, he says, and our children will be able to do things we can't. Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Ever thus.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, ever thus. Go ahead.

[Paris Martineau]

It won't happen all at once, but we'll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we could without AI. All right, eventually. And then we get into what I would consider of crazy town. Eventually, we can each have a personal AI team full of virtual experts in different areas working together to create almost anything we can imagine. Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personal instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more. There's a lot of hand waving going on there, and I also just don't think that those are going to be as realistic and as easy as this paragraph implies. And that's kind of the core complaint a lot of, I guess, AI complainers have about this sort of guy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, it is a personal AI team.

[Paris Martineau]

And also, you know, I've been talking.

[Leo Laporte]

I think you also, though, if you want to reach the future, you have to have a vision for the future that isn't yet here. Is that not a reasonable thing to aim at?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Not necessarily. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm going to do it again because it comes from my Brian. But Gutenberg had no. He was a man of the scribe's age. He was not a man of the print age. Oftentimes when you create these new technologies, you don't know how they will be used. You don't have a vision for them. You create a possibility that others see. It took a century and a half after Gutenberg, before anyone thought, to invent the modern novel or the essay or the newspaper.

[Leo Laporte]

I said, if I have seen farther than others, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants. Everybody does that. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have the correct vision, but you do need to be inspired to be doing something. Gutenberg may not be the best example. Maybe Edison would be a better example or Tesla or I can go through.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Lots of things where Edison thought. Edison thought that newspapers were going to be delivered on audio rolls, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, that's fine. He doesn't have to be right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Edison thought the typewriter was ridiculous. Edison wasn't right about a lot of it. But he created tremendous opportunity.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. That's what I'm saying. He doesn't have to be right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He didn't have the vision, he had the technology. And then what happens is inevitably the technology and the technologists become boring and fade into the background. And that's when it gets interesting. That's when people create things that the creators didn't imagine.

[Paris Martineau]

I agree. And I think that part of what we are bumping up against here with trying to parse documents and statements like this from someone like Sam Altman is he is raising billions of dollars based on this sort of hype. And he is getting that money versus other people who have ideas and thoughts about the future. And I think that, that it requires us to take a critical lens to his ideas, his approach to it. He is not just some guy with a dream. He is a guy who documents like this are getting him all of the money in the world for this sort of research and work and all of the power to do whatever he wants with it. So I do think that inherently means he should be open to criticism of the highest order.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And we need to. It's our job to mark the hype. That's what I liked about the TechCrunch thing is it, is that it figured out the hype where it was. If you go to that paragraph, Paris, I think, you know, being able virtual tutors, personalized instruction. Yeah. In any subject, maybe not in any language. Yeah, we know that. At whatever pace they need. Yeah. Right. So it's a, it's a mixed bag. But you get that phrase like full of virtual. An AI team full of virtual experts in different areas as means.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, so part of the reason this discussion, I brought this up is because I want to contra compare and contrast to the vision Mark Zuckerberg proposed earlier. Right. Maybe Sam is a little self aggrandizing compared to what Mark.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Keep going.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We'll keep going. It goes more.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. With these new abilities we've. We can have shared prosperity. This is where, this is where it starts going, starts getting a little test reality. We Have. We can have shared prosperity to. To a chicken in every pot, kids. To a degree that seems unimaginable today. In the future, everyone's lives could be better than anyone's life is now. Now, if you think about it, Jeff and Paris, we live as kings do these days. We've got running water hot and cold. We've got. We don't have to go outside to go to the bathroom. We can watch tv. I mean, in some ways we do live. Not all of us. And I think it's a mistake to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Say all of us. Yeah, that's the issue.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. He's arguing for so everyone's life.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Prosperity with no basis for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Prosperity alone doesn't necessarily make people happy. There are plenty of miserable rich people. Oh, but it would mean to improve the lives of people around the world.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Wait, so he's asking for $150 billion so that we can all have money? That doesn't make any sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you have to spend the money, distribute. Wait a minute.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's trickle down technology.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no.

[Paris Martineau]

Trickle down venture mechanical.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

He's even said maybe it's going to cost a trillion dollars to create a true.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Yeah, but once you give me the trillion dollars, you guys will be fine. That's what he's saying.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, mightn't you be. Here's one narrow way to look at human history after thou. He writes, after thousands of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, arrange it with astonishing precision at extraordinarily tiny scale into computer chips, run energy through it, and ended up with systems capable of creating increasingly capable artificial intelligence. He's describing, of course, the computer chip revolution.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you. Thank you. ATT Bell Labs.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far. I don't disagree on that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, I mean, yeah, I disagree. I think it's consequential, but I think it's consequential along others in history. Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. I think it's a disrespect to Mr. Gutenberg out there and all those who've written about him.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, thank you very much.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well, we don't have to grade each invention. All right. It's possible we'll have super intelligent. This is by the way, this is where headline that everybody reported on. It's possible we will have a super intelligence within a few thousand days. In the next.

[Paris Martineau]

Let's all do the look again.

[Leo Laporte]

It sounds like sooner. What it sounds like sooner, but it's really the next 10 years is what he's saying.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, superintel. What does that, what the f does superintelligence even mean? That's the hype of hype, the BS and bs. I watched an entire half day AI Hype conference this week of academics presenting their papers and one guy said that I don't know who he was quoting. He was quoting somebody else he'd just seen from a university who said one of the mistakes is we call it intelligence, we should have called it fancy math. And then if you thought, well, fancy math did that, fancy math did that, it wouldn't be so bad when we call it intelligence, when the anthropomorphize it to that extent and then we say it's super intelligence, it's greater, thus, and then we say, we're going to get there in a thousand days and I'm going to bring it to you if you give enough money. That is all bs. I'm confident we'll get there. I'm not.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you think that what human brain does is in some way significantly different than what a computer can do?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes. I had an interesting discussion.

[Paris Martineau]

We don't even know what a human brain does. It is so unfathomably complex to us that we cannot figure out what if.

[Leo Laporte]

It is just a deterministic machine that is hard for us to understand, but is just a machine?

[Paris Martineau]

Why do you think it's. Anything beyond a machine will be able to somehow recreate that without having any understanding about how the machine works in the first place?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, he says deep learning has been the surprise, right, that that's actually worked.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And not with accuracy, not with arithmetic. I had a discussion with Jason on AI Inside today where he brought up a new Google thing about quantum computing. And they've done something to make it more accurate. But quantum computing, as you've explained to me, Leo, is inherently close enough. It's inexact. It's not a logic gate. It says one plus one equals two. Large language models and generative AI are similar. They are random by choice. They are never exact. And so the interesting thing to me is that's what makes them more like the human brain. Because we expected computers to be exact and now computers are getting more like us in the sense that they are less exacting.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we need somebody like Sam Altman to posit this vision. It's fine for people to shoot at him now as, as, as you are and as Sarah Perez does in her Tech Crunch piece, but I Think it's good that somebody is there saying he.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Didn'T have all this test grail BS behind him.

[Paris Martineau]

Then why is every. Why are all of the top executives at OpenAI leaving?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, another one today.

[Paris Martineau]

Mira Murati, the CTO of OpenAI resigned today and no one really knows why. It was a complete shock to employees.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the problem, is we don't know. Right. She was the interim CEO when Sam was deposed. You know, he says at the end, if you were a lamp lighter, you know, fast forwarded into today's world, you would see prosperity all around you. Maybe not in the. If you went down a skid row, but you would see something pretty amazing. I think that's true. If you took your great grandparents and brought them in the 21st century, they would, they would be kind of boggled by what they saw. People flying through the air.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But let's look at the, at the amount of change that happened around 1900 either side of that is unbelievable, right? Transportation that couldn't have existed before. Broadcasting to the whole world, Film, recording things. You know, I, I even. I'm researching my.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you not think that the technological advances of the last 200 years are far outpaced the ones of the. Let me pick a different thousand years.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let me go back to the previous turn of the century, and I think those were more momentous. Let me just give you one example. The word phonograph. I didn't realize that stenographers were called phonographers. Why? Because they were the only mechanism of recording spoken words. Think about that for a second. There was no other mechanism for recording spoken words than writing them down. Why is the phonograph named? The phonograph is because it replaced what the humans did. Because it was that new. Right? Isn't that cool? But you think about that, that you could not record anything. You could draw it. Here comes the camera and here comes the phonograph. And suddenly there's an entirely different view of reality. That you can record it and have a different sense of verity in front of you. That's huge. You could never go faster than your horse could go.

[Leo Laporte]

Now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You can go really fast now. You can run machines. Now you can do things. You could never print more than 4,000 newspapers in a day because that's all you could pull off the press now. You could do hundreds of thousands and millions and on and on and on. And so I think that the changes were more fundamental than. Leo, our thoughts.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think that that's an interesting point. Is it is Completely reality altering. To go from a world where you couldn't capture someone's voice, you wouldn't be able to communicate with someone over long distances. Broadcast is not something you're even able to conceive of. To those all being relatively commonplace among the middle class. I think that that is the sort of fundamental leap we're also, you know, seeing in a way over the last couple of decades, 100 years we've been in, certainly. But it is less, somewhat less drastic because it is improvements upon already existing technologies for us.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, and they're marked improvements. Impressive improvements. But yeah, I think you're right, Paris. And he's trying to tie it to this idea that this is going to bring prosperity to all. And he's going.

[Paris Martineau]

Which I think is also just deeply laughable coming from a man who has raised a truly eye watering amount of venture capital and lives in prosperity. The idea that for the average, like the average person in America, much less the average low income or impoverished person in America, that Sam Altman raising billions of dollars is going to meaningfully improve their life in any way is laughable.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, but his hubris is so extreme. It's not about that. But he says, if I may continue, but it's a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge. Deep learning works and we will solve the remaining problems. I can see him pounding the desk. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale. That's a big thing too. Give me a lot of money to make it bigger. And there are those who disagree with him, from the Stochastic Parrots paper, for example, and that that will lead to meaningful improvements to the lives of people around the world. And then he goes on with more Geeha. AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants to carry out specific tasks on behalf of, like coordinating medical care on your behalf. So you throw in those kinds of anecdotal things and say, okay, yeah, look at the amazing. Look around to you and you see it. But the ego of this, to think that he could deliver this. And by the way, he's not a.

[Leo Laporte]

Technologist, he's an investor, he's a money raiser. Yeah, somebody's got to do that job.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Understood.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think there's any harm in letting Sam Altman say these things and try to raise the money. And if there are billionaires out there, because he's not going to get the money from you and me, he's going to get the Money from people who already have a lot of money.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, but he's going to use it to go to Washington D.C. he's going to get policy changed. And behind all this. And you even said test reality on your own. Leo, God bless you. I want to kiss you for drink. You've taken it on now. Is that what's behind that? Is eugenics?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's not a good thing, obviously.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, and that's what, that's what must be obvious. And Sam is more subtle about.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. It may be better to focus on taking money out of politics then so that these people don't have a disproportionate influence.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Amen.

[Leo Laporte]

On our society. But I think it's fine for, you know, the railroads got built by capitalists. Most of them went bankrupt, but we at least got the, got the rails laid.

[Paris Martineau]

How many people died for those railroads?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's the nature. People are going to die anyway. The nature of life. People die. Right. Should you not build the river?

[Benito Gonzalez]

A disproportionate amount of Chinese people died, by the way.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I was going to say it's largely immigrants died and I don't know, I just think we should try and be better.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm glad we built the railroads.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, but we could have built them better. That's the question.

[Paris Martineau]

Without killing a lot of people.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Was that the only way?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it. Now a defining character of the intelligence age will be massive prosperity. That is starting to sound like crop in 1933.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's what's disturbing.

[Leo Laporte]

Basically armed Germany.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So I. Yeah, okay. So I mean there, there are, there are things that we would not like to have happen. But at the same time I think that we have to have a excitement and vision for what technology can bring us and not say we already been down this road, but who and how.

[Benito Gonzalez]

But isn't that the job mostly of fiction? That's the job of fiction.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, in fact, that's what's happened is that all these, all these guys are doing spouting fiction that, that inspired them. But honestly, we probably wouldn't have gone to the moon without fiction. I mean, and what have we gained going to the moon?

[Jeff Jarvis]

A lot of people who said we.

[Leo Laporte]

Shouldn'T have gone to the moon.

[Benito Gonzalez]

People like Sam Altman. It's not fiction. It's not people like Simon, Sam Altman who has those visions. It's people like Gene Roddenberry.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but Gene Roddenberry had a TV show. He didn't. He did not create a company. He did not create a.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He inspired.

[Benito Gonzalez]

He inspired the creation.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure. That's. That's how it. As ever again as it always has been. Art inspires and then people bring it to life. That's what art does. I'm not against that. But back to your point. Is not an industrialist. Those guys. I mean, Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of great books, but he had inspired a lot of people, including apparently Sam Altman. But that doesn't mean that Sam Altman doesn't have a role. We can't let the. We're not gonna let the book authors invent the future.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But. But go back to your original question. At this point, would I prefer Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg? I'll take Mark Zuckerberg. And I'll take Jan LeCun. Over. OpenAI. OpenAI.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm starting to get soured on Jan LeCun. I'll be honest. I think he's one of those guys who is making his name by saying nay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What? Say nay. He's one who's putting AI in more hands than anyone else by.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. He's the scientist behind Llama.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Which one would you take?

[Leo Laporte]

He certainly knows more about than I do. I'm not. I'm not saying that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris, you have no choice. You are. You are. You are stuck. You must decide. There's a future to be built. There's money behind it. No choice. You can't. You can't prevaricate. Is it Musk or is it Altman?

[Paris Martineau]

Musk or Altman?

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Musk. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Zuck.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Zuck or Altman? Yeah, Musk is at the end.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I would say journalistically, I would say Zuck, because he seems to be more of a known quantity, has kind of a group of advisors around him. His thinking behind key decisions seems to be known. Altman is more of an enigma.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you think Musk has learned any lessons? I mean, why would I say Buck again? Do you think Zuck has learned any lessons through all the troubles? I mean, certainly he has better PR people.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, was Arthur C. Clarke.

[Paris Martineau]

I think a big part of that is probably better PR people, but I think he's learned a lot of lessons. How could you not being raked over the coals in front of Congress, having a. I think something that has been coming to mind as we've been talking about this is Zuck used to be the Sort of idealist that we're talking about with Altman, where he's making huge declarations, positioning his company as the future of everything, casting himself as a great man leading the world in its next generation of technological innovation. That led to him getting too close to the sun, his wax wings burnt, and he ended up being raked over the coals in Congress for God knows how many years. And now he's like, I'm done, I'm out. I'm stepping back. The company, Facebook, Meta, Instagram, all this is still doing the same sort of thing, but his approach to it is a lot more mindful. He is taking a backseat as a public figure in a way that CEOs of your typically do, because that is how you do not attract the ire of regulators. I think that leadership in all of its forms is a performance and we're seeing two different sides of it right now. And I guess that's a good. Zox is more of cultivated, I suppose.

[Leo Laporte]

At this point, but it looks their performances. That's a very good insight.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think that's really good. And, you know, I think about it too. So Nick Clegg is now a major.

[Paris Martineau]

Power at Meta and has been, but increasingly so.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the point. He's increasingly so. He's President of Global Affairs. He's in. He's trained Zuck in how to be politic and deal with politics. And meanwhile, the last CEO CEO left. And I wonder whether that's a change. Yeah, Sameer, thank you. Whether that's a change that was significant in all of this. And the new Zuck, that she was all business and Clegg is more about policy and politics and how to play that.

[Paris Martineau]

I think, I mean, I believe like Cecilia Kang and I'm Shira Frankel wrote an interesting article about this a couple years ago that it ended up. I mean, this is part of what happened around the time Zuck's fire burned out. It was. He and Sheryl Sandberg were being raked over the coals by regulators. Their names were becoming closer to household names in terms of attracting the ire of the American and global public. They were being brought in front of regulators around the globe. And at a certain point, what had become what had for a while been a very close working relationship became a rivalry and Sandberg lost. And so she ended up being the one pushed out and kind of took the fall for it. In a way. She left and someone else has risen in her stead. And that's just how the game is played.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And it's not the revenue person who rose. It's a politician.

[Leo Laporte]

Former deputy prime minister.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Which makes sense. It's def. It's politics, it's performance.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Leg was in the news this week for criticizing the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for wasting a lot of time.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He's not the current prime minister.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm sorry. Former prime minister Rishi. I know. It's so hard to keep up. It is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All these lettuce heads go by.

[Leo Laporte]

Sunak had a summit focusing on AI Safety, Safety. And Nick said, I think we wasted a huge amount of time going down blind alleys assuming that this technology was going to eliminate humanity. We're all going to be zapped by a robot with glowing red eyes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Where did Clegg say that? Oh, that's, that's wonderful.

[Leo Laporte]

He said in a. In a podcast released on Thursday. This was the November Bletchley park summit that Sunak had focusing on AI risks to national security. I don't have a problem with investigating that. I think that's fine.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, this is again, where the test grills get us, is they have redefined safety as this side of doom, as opposed to current environmental harm, current labor harm, current energy harmony, current hubris of this sort. And so they've ruined the sense of safety. So the politicians and the policymakers who are ignorant come along and say, oh, we're gonna, we're talking about safety. Oh yeah, let's get the doomers here.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a little break and then I want the AI to have a conversation about Jeff's new book, the web we weave from basic books. Is it in the bookstores now?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it'll be October 8th.

[Leo Laporte]

October 8th. Just a couple of weeks away. Our show today, brought to you by, and I mean quite literally brought to you by our good friends at Cash Fly. Cash fly for over 20 years has been the track record leader for high performing, ultra reliable content Delivery, serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And we're one of those companies. That's how we know we've been using Cash Fly for almost our entire existence. At more than 10 years, I think closer to 15. We love cash Flies Lag free video loading. We love their hyper fast downloads, their friction free site interactions. What we love is that we don't ever hear from you saying, hey, what happened? I couldn't download the podcast or it took a really long time. Cash Flies, the only CDN built for throughput. Get this, they can do ultra low latency video streaming, delivering video to over A million concurrent users with latency less than one second. Got a game? You'll love their lightning fast gaming that delivers downloads faster, zero lag glitches or outages. And everybody who serves images on the net will love their mobile content optimization. Cash Fly offers automatic and simple image optimization so your site loads faster on any device. And one of the things we liked because when we started doing this we weren't sure, well, how much is this going to cost? Or you know, the bandwidth spikes at the beginning of the week and then goes down the rest of the week. So they offered us an offer you flexible month to month billing for as long as you need it and then once you understand your load and so forth, you can get discounts for fixed terms. The the real point is you can design your contract when you switch to Cash Fly. We did and that was a lifesaver. Cash Fly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in the cloud. We've been doing that since before they offered this to the public and it's amazing. 100% cash hit ratio. I love that. With Cashflies Elite managed packages, you'll always get the VIP treatment we always do. Your dedicated account manager is with you from day one, ensuring a smooth implementation and reliable 247 support when you need it. We love Cash Fly. We know you will too. Learn how you can get your first month [e-mail] Twitter CDN. You've heard. I know you know this because I've said it for years at the beginning of every show. Bandwidth for this week in Google is provided by Cashfly at C A C, H e f, l, y.com twit thank you, thank you, thank you Cash Fly for making everything we do possible. So Notebook lm, which we. When, when they came out, we actually had one of the designers, thanks to you, Steven Johnson. It's Google's notebook that ingests content and then delivers summaries. You had it do a podcast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So Steven Johnson. So, so they came up with a new feature which is that you can create an audio dialogue in the AI about it. Steven Johnson put his entire book into it today, which I did the same thing.

[Paris Martineau]

Final Proofs.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So these are. This is all AI generated.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's all I generated.

[Paris Martineau]

It thinks that Jeff's book is called Final Proofs because that was the name.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Of the file I put into it.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, all the craziness we deal with today.

[Leo Laporte]

I like it.

[Paris Martineau]

And he argues that the Internet itself isn't the villain.

[Benito Gonzalez]

You turn it up a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paris Martineau]

It's more like a mirror.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Like reflecting.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. I have it as loud as I can go, I think. Let's see.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I can play it.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't get any louder. You get the idea, though. I mean, it really sounds like us.

[Paris Martineau]

That's crazy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It replaces us. And. And. And it's about. How long is it there? What does it say? 30 minutes.

[Paris Martineau]

Let's see, back at us. Nine minutes, you know, and he points.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, nine minutes, 52 seconds.

[Paris Martineau]

The Internet for, like, you know, spreading misinformation or eroding trust. It's giggling.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's a good summary. Is it accurate, all in all? Yes. It's. It's interestingly structured. It's not obvious. It's not like. Well, then he says. And then he says. And then he says, no, it. It. It. It synthesized the content in an interesting way. Now, I put it in once, and I think it was very good. It was very impressive.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Robot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I put it in again. Wasn't so good. It thought that it was a bunch of articles.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, but so now you did it with Paris's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So then I took. I did two. I did one where I took seven articles that were in the rundown last week on AI and put it in. Then I decided to do the Paris version where I took her oov about her new beat. So there was one, I think, four stories. Oh, and I had to make PDFs of each story easy.

[Paris Martineau]

Just wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And then put it in. So here's the Paris show.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a phrase that makes you think of, you know, robot teachers and kids writing essays with a blank. But that's funny, right? There was a lot of fear when tools like ChatGPT came out. Like everyone was worried about the future of learning. But what's happening in schools today is way more complicated than that. We've got a bunch of research. Do you recognize the article? This is based on that person. Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I mean, it's just very funny that it's got, like a cold ocean.

[Leo Laporte]

So natural.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

These articles, you name it, that paint an interesting picture. So let's dive deep into AI and education. Initially, yeah, there was a lot of fear, and rightfully so. I remember those articles from the Atlantic and Inside Higher Ed Teachers. This is not good. This puts us out of business, Jeff. This is better than anything we could do.

[Paris Martineau]

Why are we out here at 7pm at night doing this? Guys, no kidding.

[Leo Laporte]

They're giggling. They're laughing.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, we're saying, they're saying like, you.

[Leo Laporte]

Know, about the death of critical thinking and all that. Yeah. It's interesting though, right?

[Paris Martineau]

This fear. It always comes up with new tech and education. Like think about calculators or the Internet, even letting kids have cell phones in class every time there's anxiety and to be fair, the worries about jobs and critical thinking.

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds nice. I'd like to get to know her. And he's pretty friendly sounding too.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So did Stephen explain how they're doing this? Are they. Those are real human voices that they in.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

What podcast did they train on?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, must have been ours.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The thing about, about Notebook LM is that it's fairly rag based in the sense that it doesn't go off in making up stuff all over, but it obviously uses context, brings context into that discussion. It's. It's pretty damned amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Steven's post, actually, not Steven's from Biao Wang. Notebook LM now lets you listen to conversations about your sources. So you provide it with. What is the limit? You said the word rag. Retrieval, augmented generation. It's when you take documents and feed them to an LLM and then ask it to summarize. What is the limit of the number of documents?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it's 50 now.

[Leo Laporte]

It's quite a lot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, we could take. It'd be, it'd be. I didn't want to. I. I have a life, so I didn't do this. But it would be interesting to take, let's say last week's show and take all the articles we in fact talked about, make a PDF of each and put it in and see what podcast it created.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't think it would have a fun diatribe about Wikifeet, though.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it wouldn't.

[Paris Martineau]

That's the sort of human content you can only get on this weekend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Google here with us.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I actually think Leo nailed it when he said, I want to meet these people because you're never going to be able to like. And that's the crux of it, is that like, people listen to this show because they like you three, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Because they think we exist.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. But these are likable. If you go back to the one about. But you're never going to be able.

[Benito Gonzalez]

To actually meet them or talk.

[Leo Laporte]

Who cares?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. They can't believe that that's their friend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I can't ever meet Nicole Wallace, but I watch her every day.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you have a crush on her face. You could, to be honest.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, that's that's journalistic. Crushed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Wow. I. I mean, honestly, this, to me, is exactly what we're talking about. We're in a revolution here.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I mean, I could see some.

[Paris Martineau]

Utopia AI came for the podcasters, and we did.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I could see taking a bunch of articles that I want to get some sense of and throwing it in there and kind of making. As I take my evening walk.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I think maybe what Benito is saying, and I think this is true. There's. So this isn't the most efficient way of ingesting content.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

What you listen to shows like ours for is companionship. There's real people talking and having a conversation, and. And it's like your friends on a walk with you. And I think even. No. As good as the AI is, you're never gonna. You're never gonna feel like, well, these are my friends. I'm. Yeah, but if you listen to the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

NPR morning news report, they're pretty robotic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, they are.

[Paris Martineau]

And so they're robotic because they are filling a very specific format. They have to hit a certain number of seconds. I know why they're robot into the radio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He was that robot.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

You were that robot. I'm not the years. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Daniel Barbero and the. And you're listening to the Daily.

[Paris Martineau]

I. I feel like I'm Audie Cornish.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. See you. Listen, don't you. You know, Audie, I don't know. I.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's. It's technologically impressive.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Put that lamp lighter down and say, hey, guy, you know, give me something.

[Jeff Jarvis]

To listen to as you're walking around. Light. Lamp on the lights, though. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I will say, though, again, I mean, yes, this is impressive, but I feel like this falls under the parlor trick category.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it devalue what we do a little bit, though?

[Paris Martineau]

It doesn't, I don't think, because one, we know. We have the expertise to know whether or not the things we're talking about are accurate. I'm sure if I went through and listened to that podcast, there would probably be some inaccuracies in there. But also, we are journalists and storytellers and have been doing this for a while, and we approach what we are doing in a way that we're. We're making something for an audience, and we know what humans like and don't like and know how to frame that. Like, the way that that AI and education podcast opened up doesn't really make any sense. It doesn't fully have a hook or any of the normal things you'd Put in the beginning of a podcast to get someone interested in the idea or even set up what you're about to talk about. I think that there's still a lot left out there that human podcasters do over whatever that is.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I think it's perspective. Right? It's like people like all of these stories are filtered through the three of yours perspective. And that's what people listen to this show for, you know, well, Stephen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But I think, I think the, the purpose of this is different. And I'll get to there. There. There is a story in here about how you can have a social network with nothing but bots, but we'll get to that later.

[Leo Laporte]

What Stephen says, and as by the way, out of Sync points out, in on our discord, there are already many AI influencers that have huge followings. And in Japan you have these eduro that are, everybody knows, made up fantasy characters that have huge followings. So I'm not convinced that there's anything we do as humans that are. Is so very special.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What Stephen says here is he emphasizes the informational value and he says, but.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S a terrible way to. I mean, wouldn't it be more efficient to read Paris's articles or.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Not necessarily. If you have five minutes, there's four articles in there. And if I have five minutes, which is the length, I can get a sense of them. And what he says here is that it's translating information from one format to another.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Expanded. That's what's interesting about Notebook LM in this case. And so it's about information more. But literally there is a new social network. There's nothing but bots, which I think is kind of ridiculous.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, who's using it? Bots.

[Paris Martineau]

It's supposed to be for, I guess, lonely people. If you want like, yeah, people like you say what sort of reply guys you want. If you want trolls or, you know, people who are obsessed with you or people will be conversational and then people will reply.

[Leo Laporte]

People.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's what replaces us. Yeah, I want a young woman who's going to make fun of old men in this structure and that'll make me happy.

[Leo Laporte]

So one of the things Mark talked about at the Meta event is that they're getting celebrities to do voices. Judi Dench, Awkwafina Keegan, Michael Key, John Cena, they're going to be doing those voices. So maybe now it doesn't even matter if it's not a real person, if, if it's a celebrity voice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The voice doesn't make the Person.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Wait, Amazon tried this. No one is using their voice assistant that we will not name.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, look for it this week in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know for John Cena to be talking to me on Instagram. I just want to see what my friends are doing.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paris Martineau]

Please don't make me tap.

[Leo Laporte]

But if you didn't have friends, see, you're in the absolutely enviable position of having friends. Those of us who have no friends.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, Exactly.

[Paris Martineau]

I need to talk to John Cena.

[Leo Laporte]

Want John Cena to be our friend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or your Leo is the closest I've got.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll take your dad. He looks pretty famous.

[Paris Martineau]

It's true.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He is. Just don't talk politics.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Just fascinating.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It really is.

[Leo Laporte]

I guess what I am saying really is I am wide open to whatever AI brings us and I can't wait to see what it is. And that's really been my. My whole life has been about, hey, technology's amazing. I can't wait to see what happens next.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right. And make it and do things, but not to predict now that it's going to change.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I do believe for all. Yeah, that may be BS and it may be to raise money and so forth. I think he believes it. It's definitely part of the test. Real myth. But you have to have a vision. Whether you're right or not is irrelevant. But you have to have something you're aiming at. You can't just say, well, let's make it see what happens. Gutenberg didn't say, let's just make a printing press. I don't know what they're going to do with it. He must have had an idea. He wanted to get the monks out of the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But no, that's not necessarily. He was, you know, you could argue that he was trying to improve the work literacy of them. No.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no. The one guess is that he wanted to make a Bible. Another guess is that there was a bishop in town who wanted a new psalter and this was a way to impose that salter on multiple churches.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, think about the people who built the cathedral. Cathedrals over many generations, hundreds of years, they would never get to see it, but they had the vision of something that they were all working towards and perhaps they thought this would help them get into heaven or whatever. And they created an amazing edifice that we get to enjoy today. Is that so very different.

[Paris Martineau]

Than what.

[Leo Laporte]

AI Than Sam Altman saying, I want to build a cathedral of AI well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That'S his God complex. Right. It's not different in that case.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's not. That's the thing.

[Paris Martineau]

And I would say, Sam, Al's more akin to, like, the Medici, like, boss, in this case, he's not the person doing the actual labor.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, Michelangelo wasn't going to do it for free. Yeah. Does Pope Julius deserve no credit for the Sistine ceiling?

[Benito Gonzalez]

Yeah, but he doesn't have to burn the planet down to. To paint that. You know, like simultaneous. That's like the energy.

[Leo Laporte]

I think you could make the case. The Catholic Church did a few awful things. I don't. I don't. And I'm not. And by the way, I'm not saying that's a good thing at all, but. But you gotta.

[Paris Martineau]

What's your argument here, Leah?

[Leo Laporte]

My argument is I embraced the future and I'm very excited about it, and I hope I live to see it. I have no idea what it's going to be like. It could be terrible. I hope that we will do it with those values that Mark espoused. I hope we'll do it with compassion for others and. And care for others. And I'm certainly trying to live my life that way, and I hope others would do that. But I'm very excited about what we're going to see. Don't. Aren't you?

[Paris Martineau]

I'm rarely excited about anything. But that's a personality.

[Leo Laporte]

You're just jaded.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She's nihilistic.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you a nihilist?

[Paris Martineau]

She tries to say, I'm an optimistic nihilist.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the world's going to hell, but it's going to be a fun ride. Is that what you're saying?

[Paris Martineau]

Well, it's going to help, but I'm going to try my best to enjoy it.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm kind of saying the same thing. It's better than despairing, which I sometimes fall into. That's a terrible pit.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Despairing is overrated. There's only so much despair you can do.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I love this notion of progress. It's not always progress.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's also regression. It's as you try to progress. Then there are those who want to hold you back and will fight to hold you back and will get violent to do so. We see that happening today. And the progress isn't about technology. The progress is also about race and equity and other things in society. And that's the fight we will always have. I think the technology can unquestionably be used in wonderful ways. We can also screw it up yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's, I would say absolutely a part of our job. Part, part of my job I see is as a cheerleader for technology. But it's also part of our job to lobby for doing it in a, in a good way.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I think that we can do both. We can do both. I, I feel very fortunate to have been on the sidelines to watch the last 50 years of technology. It's been amazing, it's been incredible. And I, and I, I hope AI lives up to its promise. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I also hope that we don't burn the world down doing it. That's really a cause for concern. We talked on earlier about fact that Microsoft is re energizing the Three Mile island nuclear plant, the site of the largest nuclear disaster in the United States history for AI. It's a massive nuclear plant and they're going to put it back online in the next few years because they need so much juice to create.

[Benito Gonzalez]

AI frankly can't handle it. Like, sorry, the grid, our electrical grid actually can't really handle it but it.

[Leo Laporte]

Can'T handle our EVS either. And we want to move everybody to EVS because.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, but only one of those is generating a bunch of money right now. That's not bvs, it's AI.

[Leo Laporte]

But that money is about to become a trillionaire. I don't think it's based on his.

[Paris Martineau]

No, it's definitely not based in reality. But things often aren't when it's generating venture capital.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But it's not, you know, I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Have any problem with that because where does, again where does ventral capital come from most? I mean, I guess some of it comes from like the retirement funds of your local firefighters but you know, but that's on, that's on them for, you know, investing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is, this is, I mean this is late stage capitalism argument. But one thing I'm in, I'm, I just wrote part of a chapter about the Linotype and you. It was a moment when there's, there's a, there's a bad character, there's a villain in my story and he's the publisher of the New York Tribune and he's the one who realized that media was going to be controlled by capital because no longer do you just buy a wooden press and some type and you can say what you want now you had to have capital to buy the high speed press.

[Leo Laporte]

AJ Liebling said the power of the press belongs to the cat who owns the presses.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, and buys Ink by the barrel is what he said. And now the irony is they buy it by the thimble because nobody buys print anymore. But Cat was what took over media and public discourse in the late 19th century. And now capital in one sense is taking it over all the more. Look at OpenAI. But if these tools are made open in a way that many of us can have access to them, then there may be a different definition of equity. That's where, again, I'll contrast more than anything else. Meta vs OpenAI because of Meta's view and openness.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a little break. I want to do the Google change log. I need an AI to help me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You really want to do it? Do you really want to do it or do you just feel like you should do it?

[Leo Laporte]

I never want to do it, but I feel like I should.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Here's a little game. Maybe next week we feed the change log into Notebook LM so that it does just the change log.

[Leo Laporte]

Scooter X, would you do that for us? We can do Scooter X's changelog as some disembodied AI voice, or maybe as Dame Judi Dench and John Cena.

[Paris Martineau]

Then we can all go outside and do something else.

[Leo Laporte]

Awkwafina, who sounds just like Scarlett Johansson, I learned could do it and it'd be great and Scarlett couldn't complain.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I wonder if we would get taken down for that. I wonder.

[Leo Laporte]

No, of course not. We would.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Using someone else's voice. No, I'm saying they're using someone's voice thing.

[Leo Laporte]

But they paid them to, by the way. It is said millions of dollars each to do their voice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let's open AI.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I don't make the rules on YouTube, man.

[Leo Laporte]

This is meta.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, let's not. Let's not get taken down for.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, it was such a good idea.

[Leo Laporte]

No, we will not get taken down for that, I promise you. What would be the excuse?

[Benito Gonzalez]

Hey, I don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's unique content. There's no contact. I'm down.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Down.

[Leo Laporte]

Scooter X.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You got your job.

[Leo Laporte]

You have an assignment.

[Paris Martineau]

Bonito is just doing a labor protest. He doesn't want the podcast to be replaced.

[Benito Gonzalez]

I stopped to press play on the thing, so.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was going to make fun of Bonito because he couldn't get it done last week. And I was going to say that Benito was scared for his job and was doing labor stoppage and couldn't he.

[Leo Laporte]

Get done last week? What happened?

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was just how to play the file.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, we couldn't play the fake podcast last week.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it wasn't working. That's what happened. That's my job. Don't take my job.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a little tiny break. You're watching this week in Google with Mr. Jeff Jarvis, Ms. Paris Martineau and your genial host, AI Leo. Now at T Mobile, get four 5G phones on us and four lines for 25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with autopay discount using debit or bank account. $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due. Bill credits end if you pay off devices early. CT mobile.com and now it's time for the Google Change Log. The Google Change log? Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Before you start. Yes, and I just have an issue, a complaint here, not by you. There was yesterday a Chromebook showcase event.

[Leo Laporte]

And we didn't cover it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no one has. There's nothing about it. There's a story about coming up a.

[Paris Martineau]

Chromebook showcase event happens and no one covers it. Does it really happen exist?

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I wanted that to be in this. In the change log and there's no changes to report and I'm very upset.

[Leo Laporte]

There's nothing to say.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I guess not. There's nothing. If you search for it, you'll see a story saying the day before. Here's what we're expecting from it. And then nothing. Silence.

[Leo Laporte]

Hands on new hardware launched at the 2024 NYC Chromebook Studio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Look at the date.

[Leo Laporte]

This is from May28. I tried. Here's the Chrome OS events page. Let's see what they have to say. Boy, this is the most boring.

[Paris Martineau]

I've never seen a less interesting page.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Future proof your security posture.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute.

[Paris Martineau]

Resilience starts with it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. Meet Chrome OS at ftech. Meet Chrome OS at Next.

[Paris Martineau]

The power of the modern endpoint.

[Leo Laporte]

Who needs an AI? We've got Paris. All right, get ready for this because I'm excited. Google tv. By the way, they have sold them out the Google Store. But if you go to Best Buy and others, there's a place you could still get them. Google TV is adding more free channels, including. Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Ross. All day, all Night.

[Paris Martineau]

Dog Whisper with Cesar Milan. He's still doing it.

[Leo Laporte]

The Dove and Ringside Dazz and women's football. The Dove channel. The Hill TV.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh no.

[Leo Laporte]

Comedy dynamics and more. There are 157 free channels now and they're on your worth every penny.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You're going to pay for them free.

[Leo Laporte]

They started with 80 channels when they launched in 2023. But that's, that's impressive. That's very impressive. You may have noticed this. Just try it right now. Pause this show if you're watching on YouTube. Did you get an ad? Yeah. Google has started putting ads in your pause screen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Huh?

[Leo Laporte]

They're not video ads, they're just little pop ups like this one. The show is paused, but your hunger isn't. Duncan's six dollar meal deal. And that I think is supposed to prompt you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What was the way back in early days, what was the program that your screensaver would take over and put news in it?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was the thing you were in the bathroom but some advertiser was paying for showing you this. You paused the video for a reason. You're gone. And Dunkin Donuts is paying for your eyeballs that are elsewhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Hold on, just hold that thought. I'll be right back. Google's Pat Now Google has added passkey syncing to Chrome. We talked about this yesterday on Security Now. So if you use Chrome, you can save passkeys whatever operating system you're using. Windows, Mac, Linux, yes Linux, Chrome OS, Android devices, iOS coming soon. Instead of a QR code, you're going to get a pin. And now you can move those passkeys to ending device you use with Google Chrome. So that's probably good news for passkey adoption. Cloudflare has decided this isn't really a changelog item, but we'll put it in here anyway. Cloudflare has decided to add tools that let your site block AI bots for free. So if you are not yet aware of this, it is very hard to keep those AI crawlers off your site. They don't often or they often do not honor robots txt or you may not have the right line of code in your robots txt. Now, thanks to Cloudflare, customers will have access to a dashboard showing which AI crawlers are visiting their websites and scraping data, including those that are attempting to camouflage their appearance. By the way, this is getting more and more prevalent. Today LinkedIn announced they're going to let people AI bots scrape LinkedIn for content. Lionsgate did a deal for all their movies and TV shows for OpenAI scrape their content. It's lucrative.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Lionsgate is also I think they're setting up a structure where they can, they can OpenAI is going to create. No, it wasn't OpenAI. It's a different one. What's the other anthropic? No, it's another one. It's the one that makes videos.

[Leo Laporte]

Runway. Oh, Runway.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Take your Runway. It's going to help create models for them based on there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, they're not, they're not doing long clips, but the little clips that they do could probably be very useful for filmmakers that, you know, we didn't get coverage on this. We've gotta, you know, we gotta get.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Keanu Reeves, the restaurant.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, exactly, exactly. I imagine there'll be a lot of that. You know, Lisa was asking me and I this is a question for you guys. If somebody in an ad, for instance, she said that ad was clearly AI generated, should there be a little thing that says, this ad AI generated? I said, no, I don't think so.

[Paris Martineau]

I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

You think so?

[Paris Martineau]

Why not?

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, you're the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's. What does it mean to generate it? If you used it to, you know, redo a photo, is that as I generated?

[Leo Laporte]

If you used it. That's kind of my fact check.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It is that AI generated. Where is that line of calling it?

[Leo Laporte]

And how does that help you? I mean, you're looking at something, I think, in, in a news story for sure. If channel 7 runs a clip of Kamala Harris and it's AI generated, they damn well better say, this is not real. But that's. That's news.

[Paris Martineau]

It's kind of like the. There's some sort of rule or regulation, and I feel like a European or Scandinavian country where if advertisements use Photoshop, they have to disclose it. And I feel like something similar, like if it's using AI slap that little.

[Leo Laporte]

Mark, it's going to be one that we had in California. I'm sure Jeff remembers this at Proposition Prop 65, which said that every business that had carcinogenic chemicals anywhere in the business would have to have a Prop 65 warning. And so you can't go anywhere in California without a sign that says Prop 65 warning this. There may be hazardous cancer causing chemicals in this environment.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Your baby is going to die. If you come in here and you.

[Leo Laporte]

See it so many places that you no longer pay attention to it. And that's what would happen if you put an AI announcement on things. It was just like, well, of course AI is everywhere. Oh, look, I just found a 50 bill in my pocket.

[Paris Martineau]

Is AI in there?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is it Real problem.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, I think that was mine, actually. You might need to send that back.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. If it was yours. What president is on the front?

[Paris Martineau]

Guy with a mustache?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Got some her glasses?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Is that Ulysses S. Grant? Probably Nobody knows some guy with a beard.

[Paris Martineau]

Does it say maybe out there some, you know, dollar bill head is shaking their fist at the screen.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't you know that Jesus Jackson, the president of the Senate in 1853.

[Benito Gonzalez]

It's Grant. It's Grant.

[Leo Laporte]

It is Grant. Not our best.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You know that Bonito or you looked it up?

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's definitely. Look at him.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, that is.

[Leo Laporte]

Benito had to pass that test when he came in the United States. You has to be able to tell you what every. What every character is on every US Bill, right?

[Benito Gonzalez]

I was born an American.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you a citizen?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, gosh, I gotta. I gotta call to make. Wait a minute.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's.

[Paris Martineau]

That's Bonitos now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Just kidding. We love you, Benito. We like to tease.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We do indeed.

[Leo Laporte]

Google Photos is getting a redesigned video editor. Speaking of AI. AI powered presets that add video effects with a single click. So you better watch out. You better not cry. I'll tell you here which. Is this real? Is this guy really doing a skateboard trick? I don't know. No one knows.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't even trust skateboard videos anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

No more.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Now that's.

[Benito Gonzalez]

That's sad that if we can't trust skating videos, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. What good is that?

[Paris Martineau]

What. What do we have left?

[Leo Laporte]

Google says these updates are starting to roll out today, so get ready. Oops. I gotta be careful. I. I don't want to close this window. I want to close this window. Thank you. Oh, I did it again. This is, by the way, the most complicated setup and I am just not capable. I am not capable. Google's Gemini Gemini Geminu Gemini AI will soon appear in your corporate workspace. Are you excited about this workspace users Gemini AI for free. You used to have to pay 30 bucks for this will be part of your.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, really?

[Leo Laporte]

I believe so.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't want to get it away from.

[Leo Laporte]

No longer need to purchase a separate Gemini add on.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, do you think this is just so they can boost their numbers of Gemini users?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, of course it is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You cynic. You're such a cynic.

[Paris Martineau]

No, I'm an optimistic.

[Leo Laporte]

You never know your father was a movie star. I tell you, Google Earth AI eliminates clouds, so they've updated.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I put this in here. They updated Street View and associated services with Various AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Look how pretty that is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right? It's an enhanced street view.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is a image of a cloud removal AI.

[Paris Martineau]

Why can't we have clouds?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, if it's for coming looking down.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't want clouds. Shadows.

[Paris Martineau]

Mr. Hayes, I retract my.

[Leo Laporte]

See, look at this. This is San Francisco from 1938 to 2022. But without the clouds you can kind of see what is it shrinking? Is the city shrinking? I'm terrified.

[Paris Martineau]

I think it's two different photos. There's not sure. Two different angles. It's not a good comparison.

[Leo Laporte]

That's bad. Google, that's bad. Get an AI to fix that. Anyway, that's cool. And they're also bringing street view to Bosnia Herzegovina, Namibia, Liechtenstein and Paraguay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They have a new smaller camera that makes places more accessible.

[Leo Laporte]

That's kind of cool. So they could take it out on the dock and stuff like that.

[Paris Martineau]

This will be really great for the geoguessing community. Yeah, right? Community of people that. Yeah, they do some great work.

[Leo Laporte]

You can now get hands free help on your headphones by just saying hey goog if you have.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're changing the nomenclature of the wake ups because they're going to be adding Gemini to buds.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah. So if you want Gemini, what do you say? Hey Gemini.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think you get Gemini when it's.

[Paris Martineau]

Gemini Cricket is what you say.

[Leo Laporte]

I think I got Gemini on here. I actually think Gemini is pretty good, but I think they're all pretty good. None of them great. But earlier today we were doing Windows Weekly and I posited that it must be at least half of Qualcomm's income came from licensing. And then I thought, well, I know how to find that out. I'll ask Gemini. So I said, how much of Qualcomm's income last year came from licensing? And it knew the answer. Qualcomm's 2023 fiscal year licensing accounted for approximately 16% of its total revenue. 16%. So I was wrong. It's not what it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, you think if you trust Gemini, but you don't know if you're.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you like that voice? No, it's kind of nasal. I wonder if I can change it. Anyway, that's the Google change lock next week. Ah, there it is. Scooter's doing it. Google Gemini is coming to Pixel Buds. But I guess you. You have to send the settings. Choose if you want. Hey Google, you know, the old voice assistant or the new one. Thank you for clarifying that. Next week Scooter X is going to do the entire Change log as a podcast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh no. It happened again.

[Leo Laporte]

It's telling me the story of the history of voice assistants.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I thought your sound went out.

[Leo Laporte]

IBM Shoebox, introduced in 1962 at the Seattle World's Fair.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Why? Until I do this, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, Google, stop.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, be nice, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, geez. Thank you. And stop for stopping. Yeah. Jeff and Paris, please. You know, every week I end this show with bitter regret. I'm going to tell you a little insider scoop here. I am a sad, sad podcaster because I end the show, I say, that's it. See you next time. Five hours later or whatever. And. And I look at the. The rundown. I said we didn't even cover a fraction of these fine stories that Google and Paris have put in. So help me out here. What are the make the big stories that I've missed?

[Jeff Jarvis]

He just said that Google and Paris put them in the rundown.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, Jeff, you've been relegated. Okay, I just spent that whole time fact checking Gemini. It was correct. 16% of qualcomms.

[Leo Laporte]

Pretty good.

[Paris Martineau]

Was.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought it was half. And in fact, when I asked earlier today, it said 20 to 30%. But I did ask this time specifically for 2023. So there you go. Amazon's making employees come back to work five days a week. No more remote work at Amazon. Sorry, kids, they're not happy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Amazon.

[Paris Martineau]

Honestly, I think this is just a strategy to reduce headcount.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, get the wings to say bye bye. But then they get this problem because you get quiet quitting. Right. You got people go. Okay, well, I'm gonna look for work. Meanwhile, I guess I'll show up. But I'm.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There was a great tick tock of a guy saying, oh, go to work on Amazon. Badges in and leaves immediately out the door.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's not going to go well, is it?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it's not.

[Leo Laporte]

How about the fact. Did you see this that way back in time? Raymond Chandler, who is best known of course for his character Philip Marlowe in 1953, sent a 1953 before I was even born, before Jeff was even born.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Even, even that sent a letter to.

[Leo Laporte]

A friend with a jargon filled passage parodying science fiction writers writing. He said, for instance, I checked out with K19 on Aldebaran 3 and stepped out through the chromolite hatch on my 22 model Sirius hardtop. I cocked the time Jector and secondary and waded through the bright blue Manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. But. But get ready for this. A little later. The sudden Brightness swung me around and the fourth moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator, and Google had told me it wasn't enough.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Proper name Google at that.

[Leo Laporte]

Google's responding. Stop it. Did. Did somehow Raymond Chandler see into the future in 1950 and see the Google?

[Paris Martineau]

He had a dream.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Proving Pretzels proven Bonito's point. It's always the fiction writers who are ahead, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. Yeah. Yep. It. The thought is probably that he did, not that he just made it up.

[Paris Martineau]

The word, but still, maybe that's where Google came from.

[Leo Laporte]

Google told me.

[Paris Martineau]

Google, you gotta stop saying it.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, Google. Okay, that's. That's my contribution to the pile. What do you got?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'll give you one I love.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, you go to last week, a project known as Word Freak, short for Frequency Shut down. It's a project analyzing human language usage, and it shut down because generative AI has polluted the data. The creator says, basically, Word Frequency is a program that tracks the ever changing ways that people use different languages and analyzes a bunch of different sources, including Wikipedia, movie and TV subtitles, news articles, books, you know, social media. And it would be used to analyze changing language habits as like slang and popular culture change. The project's creator, Robin Spear, wrote, the project will no longer be updated. Generative AI has polluted the data, she wrote. I don't think anyone has reliable information about post 2021 language usage by humans.

[Leo Laporte]

Now the web at large, everybody was using the word delve and they said, this can't be right.

[Paris Martineau]

I use the word delve.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I use the word delve. And I had to insist it was me. And of course people said that's what an AI would say.

[Paris Martineau]

Now the web at large is full of slop generated by large language models written. No one to communicate nothing, including this slop in the data skews the word frequencies.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Isn't that data in the large language models, though? Yeah, like the word usage frequency and things like that. Wouldn't that.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's the thing. It ups the. It ups the average of the average words. Right. More average words are used because it chooses the average words. I can see why they might be. They might. Maybe they're overreacting, but I could see why they might be.

[Paris Martineau]

I could see why it might just be time to end the project.

[Leo Laporte]

They would know better than.

[Paris Martineau]

Good stand.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh, good one. All right, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All righty, line.

[Leo Laporte]

We're gonna turn this into a competition and have people vote on which story was the best.

[Jeff Jarvis]

John Mulaney was hired to unbelievable address a dream force.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And the San Francisco Standard was there to report on it. You want to read the first gags?

[Leo Laporte]

So this is, and I should mention that almost every comedian, maybe not of John Mulaney's stature, but almost every comedian does corporate gigs, right? And when they do corporate gigs, they like to put in little jests and jibes at the CEO and you know, kind of personalize it to the company. Apparently John Mulaney thought this was all beneath him. I don't know how much Dreamforce paid for him to speak. This is, by the way, Salesforce's big conference.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Dreamforce is a huge conference.

[Leo Laporte]

Huge.

[Jeff Jarvis]

San Francisco shut down.

[Leo Laporte]

Literally cleaned itself up last year for Dreamforce. So John starts by saying, let me get this straight. You're hosting a Future of AI event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably. The Standard says Kevin Wynn writing. Everybody inside the auditorium at the Moscone center groaned. Any notion that the award winning comic would play the corporate gig safe and clean were thrown out the window Thursday when Mulaney, closing the Dreamforce festivities, a headliner no less, started roasting his host, Salesforce, and the audience sitting right in front of him. You look like a group who looked at the self checkout counters at CVS and thought, this is the future. Pretty funny.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty funny. If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that humans should die, then I think we should die. So many of you feel imminently replaceable.

[Paris Martineau]

He also says, my favorite one, can.

[Leo Laporte]

AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's pretty much it. I like that.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what, that's good comedy. That's good writing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It is, it is, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm wondering, however, he asked one attendee, your VP of Customer success, congratulations on the position. Did not exist five years ago. I think he's probably just doing his gig. Yeah, no evidence that Dreamforce didn't give him his money. I have to say, I've done the same thing. I've bitten the hand that feeds me. I was invited to go to Palm Beach, Florida to speak to HBO affiliates some years ago. They thought they were getting a tech guy who was going to do a gadget filled keynote showing people what the future was. They specifically said, don't mention anything about piracy, please. So what did I do? I talked about piracy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did you get paid?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they gave me the check, but they practically spit on it before they they gave it to me. I felt really bad, but I couldn't. I couldn't stand up in front of them. This was back when there was kind of a battle between HBO and NBC and others and the Internet. They were. They were really upset about, you know, pirates stealing stuff, and they were getting pretty nasty about it. And I said, you know, chill out, man. You're. You're criminalizing your customers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Good for you. God's work, man.

[Leo Laporte]

Didn't go well. But I did get to stay at the. What is that beautiful Palm beach hotel is pink. It was beautiful. I did get to stay there for a couple of nights. Yeah, it was nice. Mar a Lago, Something like that. I can't remember. Yeah, the name of it. Anyway, I understand how Mulaney feels. You feel compromised when you take money from a big corporate to do. To do a comedy, and so you're going to end up maybe trying to show your independence by roasting them a little. I bet they didn't mind that. I bet they laughed. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Can we talk about Marquez? Brownlee's wallpaper app.

[Leo Laporte]

12 bucks a month.

[Paris Martineau]

12 bucks a month for wallpaper, Marquez. It's just ridiculous to me that somebody who has all of this goodwill, who has created this huge Persona, he could have launched a million things and made millions of dollars from them and said he chooses the dumbest possible idea, which is a subscription wall phone. Wallpaper app.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Marquez, upon receiving some criticism. Constructive thought was constructive criticism said, quote.

[Paris Martineau]

I hear you very succession.

[Leo Laporte]

I hear you. We. What was it? What was the slogan? We hear. We hear.

[Paris Martineau]

We hear for you.

[Leo Laporte]

We hear for you.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes, we hear for you.

[Leo Laporte]

Because he wanted to be we hear you. But then his aide says there's actually been some concern about listening in on our cable customers. So we probably shouldn't say, we hear you. We hear for you. Anyway, I feel bad for Marques. Marquez is a good guy. He's very talented, very smart, high integrity. I don't know why he doesn't need.

[Paris Martineau]

How do you think this happens?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, he doesn't need this. I think somebody talked him into it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's brand.

[Paris Martineau]

Why would he do that?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know, why would I do many of the dumb things I've done?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Why would he wear the shirts he wears? You know, Leo, I mean, how would.

[Paris Martineau]

You own a Lee Cat?

[Leo Laporte]

Don't you like this shirt?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, it's very nice.

[Leo Laporte]

This comes from the screensavers days. This is an old. Wow. Bit of wardrobe.

[Paris Martineau]

Are those the screens that got saved?

[Leo Laporte]

They were the screens that got Saved. Although they would make me button the top button. I'll never forget on the screensavers. We hired a Hollywood producer, big shot, wonderful guy. He had been a booker for the Carson show. So that really gave him the credentials to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And lost that job. And all he could do was work.

[Leo Laporte]

On screen saving technology show on a fading cable network. But I do remember him coming in, he said, you know, this show needs one thing. I said, what's that? Because I used to be, by the way, I used to be the managing editor of the show. But he, he became the managing. I said, well what, what does it need, Paul? He said, more cleavage.

[Paris Martineau]

I was going to say that's a classic, classic Hollywood guy thing to say.

[Leo Laporte]

It was totally, it was like, no, it doesn't. What it needs is more Linux.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wnbc.

[Leo Laporte]

What else you got? What else? Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk's SpaceX. Now by the way, if you've never played Cards against humanity, if you want true hilarity, get your friends and family together. Have you ever played this, Paris?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's great.

[Leo Laporte]

And the whole idea, it's a very simple game. You get handed out cards that are just a phrase, you know, like the seven dwarfs in your bed. And then the their one person gets a fill in the blank phrase and you pick from your hand the blank.

[Paris Martineau]

Apples to apples. But it's darker and dirtier.

[Leo Laporte]

It's dirty. Anyway, they're wonderful people. Apparently back in 2017, when the President was talking about building a border wall, they decided to thwart him by raising money. 150,000 people, in fact, donated $15 to this crowdsourced campaign to purchase a vacant land in Cameron County, Texas. Land that would have been used to build the wall. They bought it in 2017 as kind of a stunt, but they owned it free and clear for at least six months. SpaceX, according to the lawsuit, has, quote, treated the property as its own cards against humanity, suing SpaceX, accusing it of trespassing, clearing the land of vegetation, laying down gravel, bringing in generators and using it to park vehicles and store construction materials. SpaceX did not respond to the Washington Post on this story. It is, you know, right next to SpaceX's Starbase industrial complex. And perhaps it was just a innocent error that they thought this was part of the.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh yeah, well, when Cards Against Humanity confronted them over it, I believe SpaceX said, like, here's an offer for your land. It's a low ball, you have like 24 or 48 hours to respond. So I. It's I mean, they were aware of it at some point. It seems.

[Leo Laporte]

That made space. You don't want to make cards against humanity mad. They said we're probably going to lose because we don't have as much money as SpaceX. But you know what? I think they should have another crowdfunding effort and raise some money because I think this is. They're doing God's work here. Suing SpaceX for trampling over their pristine vacant lot. I think that's my favorite story of the week.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a good story.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Elon Musk denies romantic relationship with Giorgio Maloney after Italian prime minister calls him precious genius.

[Leo Laporte]

I do not. I did not have sex with that woman. Except that Elon. Never mind. I don't want to go down this road. No, no, no, no, no. Nope.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Paris Martineau]

I think that's all.

[Leo Laporte]

McDonald's touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead. You won't believe what happened next. What happened next, Jeff Jarvis?

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're still putting pickles in the burgers there. It didn't involve jobs going down. Technology doesn't always do that.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to say, I have been in a McDonald's that had these kiosks and there were literally like three people working behind the counter. I mean, I don't know. Is that really the case that it didn't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, you're in California.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this was in Rhode Island.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, really? Oh, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I was visiting my mom and I thought, I gotta have something to eat before I leave. And I went in there in the middle of nowhere and it was jammed. And they had those big, you know, they have those giant screens, French fries. You push a button and. But there was hardly anybody behind the counter. Where are people going to get their. Their French fry skills if you don't. If you can't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So can you explain to me the Mullenweg vs WordPress WP engine fight or do you don't care to?

[Leo Laporte]

I love Matt, I really do. He's of late been. I don't know. Sometimes something happens to people when they become rich and famous. I don't know. I don't think he's wrong on this. Matt originally created WordPress as an open source project. Founded a company that runs WordPress.com. the company's called Automatic with two T's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You know, by the way, it took me years before I got the joke.

[Leo Laporte]

Matt. Get it? Matt.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Matt.

[Leo Laporte]

And we had Matt on a couple years ago. And he's a big supporter of open source.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't think he's really wrong. WordPress.com is the commercial arm. You can always download WordPress and run it on your own server. There is another company called WP Engine which also provides a service similar to WordPress.com kind of, you know, hosted WordPress. He says the company has been profiteering without giving much back, disabling key features and so forth. He actually started getting a little bit more aggressive, calling it a cancer. He said that WP engine, you know, WordPress automatic, contributed 39 hours, 3,900 hours a week, man hours a week, woman hours, coding hours a week to WordPress WP engine, 40 hours a week. He also said that may not be exactly right, but he, he, he said he also called GoDaddy a parasitic company and an existential threat to WordPress's future. So he criticized a number of people. It's become a little bit of a loose cannon. Anyway, WP Engine sued him or sent him a cease and desist, to which he responded with a lawsuit. So this is going to be kind of a, a little bit of a battle. He said the problem is they call themselves WP Engine and it's confusing people that this is WordPress. But he did the same thing. WordPress.com right? Mullenweg said WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they're giving you WordPress, but they're not and they're profiting off the confusion. A lot of companies, though, offer, you know, one button, install a WordPress and hosted WordPress and things like that. I'm not sure, including GoDaddy. Anyway, it seems like it's a little inside baseball.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right, thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I love Matt. I'm not gonna say anything bad about him, but sometimes, you know, I understand. I. We were pissed off at Twitter because we thought, you know, we were Twitter. Twitter existed. I tried to buy it. They didn't take my offer.

[Paris Martineau]

Ah, what a world that would have been. You as CEO of Twitter.

[Leo Laporte]

Twitter would have been much better.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Just take a look at Twit Social, our massive instance and what a nice, clean, happy go lucky place that is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Would have made a penny, but it'd be great.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Never made a penny anyway.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's true.

[Benito Gonzalez]

Never actually made a penny anyway, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. They're just losing money like crazy, aren't they? Anything else that we should do before we wrap things up? You're watching this week in Google, Paris Martino, she is@the information.com. you should subscribe.

[Jeff Jarvis]

One other funny one. I find it funny. Introducing HP Print, AI industry's first intelligent print experiences. As if could it. Can it just turn on the printer and work? Just do that?

[Leo Laporte]

There's no money in that, Jeff.

[Paris Martineau]

Can they just make it so that I don't have to delete the printer and re add it to my laptop every other time? Is that the AI? That's all I want.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Maybe they can.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. There's no. We don't know yet. Maybe they can. Maybe this AI will solve all your printer woes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Maybe this is the AI is going to say does not compute.

[Leo Laporte]

Does not compute.

[Paris Martineau]

AI is going to say you have to pay for a toner subscription.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, more like we actually, you know, it's funny. I we have a very nice HP color laser printer that's very good. That's what we use at home.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm not against Jeff has a brother. I have a Canon as we've previously discussed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, well, I have that brother as well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You have a memory on you.

[Leo Laporte]

I have the brother that everyone has.

[Paris Martineau]

That was just a show title that I thought was cute, so I did remember it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh really?

[Paris Martineau]

We had a show Brother Paris's Canon or something like that.

[Leo Laporte]

We are watching this week in Google. Jeff Jarvis is also here, former emeritus professor of Journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. We'll take a little break and when we come back, let's do some picks. What do you say after investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan vs Verizon and at&t@t mobile.com Keep and switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says happy Friday. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday. Random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that. Get more with Geico. O'Reilly, you've got questions. O'Reilly Auto Parts has answers. Need a pro you can trust? We've got that, too. No matter what you need, our professional parts people have the training and expertise to help you do things right. Deep automotive knowledge. Just one part that makes O'Reilly stand apart.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The professional parts people.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Jeff Jarvis]

O'Reilly Auto Parts.

[Leo Laporte]

Time for our picks of the week. I don't know what Paris thing is. All I can see is it says the 90s executive yes man. What is that?

[Paris Martineau]

So when I was a kid growing up, my dad had this, like, little guy on his desk that we'd always kind of make fun of when he could turn on a button. It was called the yes Man. Someone got him it for him as a gift, as a gag gift. And basically the thing was, I think it was voice activated, where you were supposed to have it in your desk as an executive, and you'd say some sort of idea, and then it would in response be like, that's a great idea, or how do you do it? Or when you're right, you're right. And just all sorts of brown nosing things. And I don't know how, but this got woven into the psyche of my family. The actual yes man disappeared many a decade ago, but me and my family to this day will always be like, how do you do it? Or when you're right, you're right. When we were on our trip in Croatia, we got talking about this. I was a little drunk, and I was like, you know, I could find this on ebay. I found not one, but two. I sent one to my parents. I sent one to my home.

[Leo Laporte]

God.

[Paris Martineau]

And now it's here. Let me turn it on. I can see if I can get it. Hello?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Completely.

[Paris Martineau]

Very loud.

[Leo Laporte]

What did I say? I agree with you more completely.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, yeah, it. It's loud. It's going to do it again, probably shortly.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So it's random. You don't. You don't get the.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know. It will keep going. And it's really delightful. So that's my pick of the week. Is this guy that I got get.

[Leo Laporte]

It on ebay because it's no longer. According to RAO Creations, which actually created this thing. No longer available anywhere, anywhere. Well, Paris has something to say about that. That idea is a real beauty, Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

What more can I say? When you're right, you're right.

[Paris Martineau]

That's me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What does Gizmo think of it?

[Paris Martineau]

No response.

[Leo Laporte]

There's something a little weird about this, though, because your father had this on his desk your whole childhood.

[Paris Martineau]

It was my Whole childhood. But it made enough of an impression. It was definitely there for a bit. It's kind of a funny thing to have on your desk when it's not yelling at you. You can turn it off.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is your father based on the beginning of the show and the video? Is your father someone who could be classified as a character?

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds like he is.

[Paris Martineau]

He's definitely a character.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I would classify my parents as characters, to say the least. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You can get this for 44.99.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Geez.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, that's very expensive. Yeah, I think I got this 20 bucks.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, here's also the whipping boy.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, boy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Not PC to use.

[Leo Laporte]

Also from John Rao in 1991. I'm surprised.

[Paris Martineau]

Doesn't work as is for parts.

[Leo Laporte]

For parts. For whipping boy parts. Ebay is an amazing place.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It really is.

[Paris Martineau]

It really is. So, you know, think of something strange from your past. And ordered on ebay is my pick of the week.

[Leo Laporte]

I like it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

For me, what would it be? It would be a rock, maybe with a face painted on it. How about that?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did you have a pet rock back in the day?

[Leo Laporte]

I did not have a pet rock.

[Paris Martineau]

He didn't have many friends. He said, before, even.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Even the rocks didn't like them.

[Leo Laporte]

Even they just rolled. You seem like a very intelligent fella. What's your take?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Following Paris is hard. I'm boring now. So let's make this really quick. More Americans, especially young adults, are regularly getting news on Tick Tock.

[Leo Laporte]

I saw this from Pew. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Young adults in the US now regularly get their news from Tick Tock. How we can ban this is beside me. It's. It's useful in the election. It's being used by the candidates. I just don't get it.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll see.

[Paris Martineau]

Once a year, I go and do a career day at a local high school, and when I asked everybody how they got their news, everybody said, I mean, the one thing most people said was tick Tock. When I asked them, are you guys concerned about the Tick Tock ban? They're all like, no, I'll just use reels or something else. They just didn't care at all. Which I thought was interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A nihilistic generation to your heart.

[Paris Martineau]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

According to Pew, the the share of TikTok users who regularly get into their news on the platform has doubled in the last four years. That's amazing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It really is.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, my daughter, though, says, Yeah, I use TikTok for search. I said, you can't use it for search. She said, try me. I said, well, how Tall is the Empire is the Empire State Building. And she found it. You just search Tick tock. You could find anything.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, did you have to listen to a 30 second video telling you that or.

[Paris Martineau]

Probably.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but you know, I hate that life. I hate that too.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, YouTube is far worse. How do I get this HP printer to work? I'm gonna take 20 minutes to.

[Leo Laporte]

I know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Turn about, hit this.

[Leo Laporte]

Smash the subscribe.

[Paris Martineau]

Tap that bell.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Jeff and Paris, it has been a great reunion. I had a wonderful lunch with you guys two weeks ago and I'm glad to get back. This is the show I look forward to all week because you're so silly. And I hope we can do this all again next week. What do you say?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I'll consider it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. Wednesdays we're here right after Windows Weekly. Roughly 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us live. We stream everywhere. Yes, even X. You know, I tried. I tried. While I was gone, I told the team, I said I want to be on X anymore. And they. And they said no, you have to be. Yeah, you do you, either of you mind if we're on X?

[Paris Martineau]

No, I'm. I'm on X. I.

[Leo Laporte]

You both post on X. I post.

[Jeff Jarvis]

AI inside on X.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I guess I was wrong. Anyway, we are on YouTube. We are on Twitch. We are on X. We are on Facebook. We are on LinkedIn. We are on Kik. And we are on Discord. If you are a member of the club. Oh, if you're not a member of the club, my goodness gracious. I would sure appreciate if you would join. It's only $7 a month. It really helps us on our bottom line. We. We need that revenue to. To. To keep Bonito employed, frankly. So help us out. Twit TV club Twit. Seven bucks a month. We do give you some benefits ad free versions of all the shows access to the Discord, which is a great hang. You also get special events and so forth that going on. In fact, Friday we're going to do 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern in the club. Chris Marquardt's photo review, the assignment was hypnotic. He has some great photos that the people have submitted to our Flickr group. We'll do that as photo review, which we did for years on the radio show. We'll do it as a special on Friday and we will stream that live. But after the fact, you have to be a member of the club to see it. So if you're not a member, please join. We'd Love to have you Twit TV Slash Club Twit after the fact. You can get this show on the website Twit TV Twig. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. You could subscribe too to the audio or the video and get it automatically as soon as it's available and that way you can listen at your leisure. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you Paris. Thank you Jeff. Have a great cacio e Pepe tonight.

[Paris Martineau]

One last surprise look for the road.

[Leo Laporte]

Ready? One, two, three. We'll see you next time on this Google Now AT T Mobile get four 5G phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins. All on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. CT mobile.com how do you feel when you switch to GEICO and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says Happy Friyay. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday. Random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that. Get more with GEICO.