Better Offline - More, Everything, Forever With Adam Becker

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about introspection-free venture capital, the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse effect of LLMs, and trying to find a better future to focus on.https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/ Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful!  YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today! --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic.

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I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you. Again, we are experts. Listen to PodMeets Tworl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. AllZone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline.

I'm your host at Zetron. As ever, go to the episode notes to sign up to the newsletter. Please do the premium. It's how make me money. Buy a fuck data center's t-shirt or join one of the assorted communities if you ever want to fall further into the larger Zitronverse. But today we're joined by the author of More, Everything Forever. That's right, journalist and astrophysicist Adam, how you doing?

I'm doing well, Ed. How are you? Got a new podcast, don't you? Yeah, I do. It's called Dreaming Against the Machine and it just came out pretty recently. What's about? Well, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, It's like a more optimistic version of this podcast.

Okay, no, I like this. I want to hear about that. Tell me. Yeah. So, you know, I spent a lot of time when I was writing my book, more everything forever, thinking about terrible people and their bad ideas about the future. And that made me want to think more about good ideas about the future and people who I actually like. And so the podcast is about, you know, trying to imagine what a. realistic good future could look like.

Yeah. Can you give me some examples? Oh, no, I have no idea. Oh, okay. You're still working that one out. Yeah, still figuring that out. I mean, that's sort of the podcast is me thinking out loud about these things with different guests each week.

So, yeah, I mean, it's certainly a future where we found a way to wrench power away from these tech billionaires. and it's not a future that involves like, you know, space colonization and super intelligent AI. But more than that, I'm still figuring that out. That's what the podcast is for. Yeah, I do get a good amount of people who email and are like, yeah, well, why don't you talk about more positive things on the show. A, it's tough to find them. But B, also, sometimes when I do it, people get mad at me. Yeah, but Ed, I don't think that you...

Mr. Schill. I don't think you mind people being mad at you, Ed? I, yeah, I don't. But at the same time, it's like when I'm, like, I mentioned this Nebula X-1 projector thing I really like. It's quite expensive. It's like this insane thing in like a box as a projector. It's like got the speakers you can plug in there, wireless and it's beautiful.

It works every while. I talked about that once. And I had people email me saying, Ed, you know, you're a shill, you being a shill, you can't. And it's like, oh my Christ, do I have to hate everything? Because there's plenty I do, don't get me wrong. I feel like you get plenty. Yeah. But I feel like there are some really good things. Like, I feel like if America was not under the gastocracy right now, we would be in a kind of golden era of solar. Like I have solar on my house in Vegas, I barely paying electricity bill. It's kind of magic. It's kind of amazing. Yeah.

But yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of great technology, and solar is a really good example. Like the solar technology has gotten really great. Battery technology has gotten really great. I think that these are wonderful things. And, yeah, if we weren't subsidizing fossil fuels and actually thinking clearly about both what is the, you know, the cheapest and most effective sources of energy and what would be best for the climate and the planet, you know, I think it would. be pretty clear that we'd be going through an even faster energy transition than we are already. Wouldn't energy also be cheaper if we were mass solar? I sure someone's going to hate me for saying that. I think that's true. You know, I'd have to look at the numbers, but I mean, solar is, I believe,

the cheapest source of energy at the moment. It has been for a bit. What if instead we could just have natural gas everywhere, which is very cheap I'm hearing at the moment. Yeah, I mean. There's lots of it. nothing's happened to the supply, everyone's fine. Yeah, everything's fine. Nothing is broken and we're getting really tired of winning. Yeah. Talking of thinking, though, just before we got on, like, one of the most insane things I think I have heard a tech CEO say, and I say this is someone who's heard Alex Carp speak before, Mark Andreessen's saying he doesn't have introspection. Yes, this was kind of my favorite thing that's happened recently. Right. Right. for values of favorite, where I mean, like, horrible and unhinged.

But yeah, no, he said that he doesn't introspect, and that introspection was invented in Vienna 100 years ago by Sigmund Freud. And like, okay, what do you think that, I don't know, Hamlet was about? What do you think? All right. What was Hamlet about? Hamlet was about a guy who cried a lot when his life was awesome. Same with Macbeth, same deal. Exactly. Like what does he think? Mid-Summer night's dream, drugs. But like what does he think any? Just ruining Shakespeare life on air. Yeah, exactly. Like all art. Like any, any, any form of art pretty much ever created by anyone at any point in history. Like, why does he believe this? I think. think, you know, it does seem like Mark Andreessen doesn't think. He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't

introspect. But what's going on in that magical brain all the time? That magical brain, the egg-like brain that he has. The fucking like, Dr. Robotnik. Yes. Yeah. It's so funny as well because, I know, I'm constantly introspective to the point where I'm like tearing up my own theories and things that I've done and thought about again and again and again, it's one of the enjoyable things about being human. Yeah, exactly. One's ability to reflect. Yeah. That's kind of make sense when you look at all the AI stuff, though. Yeah, I mean, I think that for someone like Andreessen, he's gotten so wealthy and so powerful, he's not used to hearing no and introspection from that perspective is just an opportunity to tell yourself no and why would he ever do that to himself.

But, you know, LLMs definitely never introspect. They're not really capable of it. Yeah. And, you know, we, we've got this chain of reasoning stuff that's supposedly like introspection, but it's not. And I think that if you don't introspect, that's going to make it so much easier to be fooled into thinking that these things are thinking. Yeah. And also, I like the chain of thought reasoning, because if you think that's what thinking's like, you must not think so hard. Because it's just, what is thinking? Well, every, time I hear literally anything, I think, what would they, what do they mean by that? What am I, it's like every single thought you have is a Tucker Carlson monologue. What do they mean? Yes. What is that?

Yes. What do you mean? How's my day? How's my day to day? It's the afternoon. Is it like, is it just the daytime? Do I care about nighttime now? Does this person care about me?

Do they care about my family? What's going on here? Just like in this constant state of like confusion. Yeah. And then using way too much. way too much energy to just go, yes, fine. Yeah. It's fine.

I'm all right. You know, keep yourself busy. It's just, what I don't get is, well, I mean, I take that back. Yeah, I actually totally get this. But if you're that rich, you have so much more time to do so many more interesting things and think about them, for example. Yeah. You know, just like a book or like a song or at that price, at the amount of money that he has, He could just be like, I wouldn't mind seeing, I don't know, public enemy.

I bet I could just call all of them and pay them all to just do a concert in my living room. I don't think Mark Andreessen is a big public enemy fan, but just for the sake of example. Right, yeah. And it's very, it gets me back to this thought I've had this whole time with the LLM era where it's like, this is just the digital dunce cap era. This is when we find out all the people who just have not been thinking the entire time, who just all they've been doing is just walk around going like money, money, money, growth. Is it like Facebook?

Does it like Facebook? He reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg, give him a million dollars. Wait, he needs $10 million, given $20, just in case someone else gives him $10. Just this constant state of like angry anxiety. Yeah, I mean, God, what was it? I saw this, this LLM startup advertising somewhere. online that was saying that they were, you know, going to do your intellectual labor for you and they were going to do your homework for you and stuff like that in school. And I'm like, do you

know what intellectual labor is saying that you're going to do it for me? Because they were saying then you just get to reap the benefits of the intellectual labor. And I'm like, okay, saying that you're going to do it for me and then I get to reap the benefits is sort of like saying you have a robot that's going to do pull-ups badly. And if I just watch it do pull-ups badly, then I will somehow get stronger. Like, that's just not how it works. That's not how thinking works.

Well, it kind of reminds me, I saw this Andre Carpath. You remember Andre Carpathie, he's one of the many co-founders of Open AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he posted this thing the other day who's like, yeah, it was spending hours working on like a private wiki for all of his research, not his research project, but stuff he was like looking into strongly.

And it's like, yeah, and then you can use an LLM to ask it questions. It's like, why? Like, just why? Yeah. Like, I would get it if he was like, to be clear, if he was saying, I as a scientist, I'm collecting tons of data and I want to have it in a place I can poke at it. Fine.

It didn't seem, he was suggesting it's very much like, just research into stuff. stuff he was looking at on like his personal knowledge base. It's like, what is going on in your brain, mate? What are you thinking about all day? It's just like, oh, wouldn't it be great if all these thoughts I was having were in a wiki format and obsidian? I mean, oh, Christ. Also, the whole point of a wiki is that anyone can edit it. Why does he want anyone to be able to edit something that he's using? Well, it's not anyone. It's just him. Yeah. It's just him. It's just his wiki. Right. But that's just a document. That's just like,

like a word document. That's, I don't understand. No, I don't either. And like, I, there was a guy underneath there who, this is going to be in a newsletter I'm working on today that will actually be out before this, whatever. Yeah. And there was a guy below, beneath it who said, yeah, I'm doing a less professional version of this using open claw. It's like, to catalog what great thoughts exactly that's, what grand missives from the depths of the brain minds do you fuck quits have what going on. Because every time I see my new game is to any time I see someone just being like, I, I'm, I'm running 11 agents concurrently and they're doing this and that. I try and find what it is they're working on. I've never been able to. Never. There are images of like,

there's like a photo of them with like 19 terminal windows. The CC usage saying they spent two and a half thousand dollars and a $100 a month subscription. But you can never just like look at them. Well, that's because they, oh, wow, you're cooking. They don't know what they're working on half the time, right? They've got one of those processes is like an agent where they asked it, oh, come up with ideas, right? Yeah, come up with ideas. Work on an interface, an interface series to observe in Figma and then have another, have another agent, look at that and say, this is the one. And then at the end, something will happen. I'm sorry, can we, can we just pause for a second?

The fact that there's something called Figma, like, it's just a Ligma joke. I don't understand. It is. Yeah. How did they do this? Yeah. But Figma's kind of use. Like, figma, no, absolutely.

I'm not, I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm just saying the name. The name is a problem. Yeah, having to walk around saying Figma. Yeah. It's kind of like having to say like Hadoop. Yeah. Yes.

Hadoop or Superbase. Yeah. Versal's fine, but like, there are a lot of, even Anthropic is a stupid. name. I don't, I like, I think we need to return to an era where we only let Taiwan name our companies. Because look, you got Honai Precision Limited. Now, there's a company name. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Yeah, that's a good name. I know exactly what they do. Exactly. I know, I do nothing fancy, don't need to, you got Quanta. I assume that that's something to do with one of their founders. Maybe they named it. If you named it before the 80s, it's fine.

but like no more startup names. You can't do dot Lee and anything. Figma, nope. Call it like, I don't know, art corporation dot biz. I don't care. Just make this easier on me. But nevertheless, it's,

I, we were all stuck about this before. And there is another theory that I'm growing with LLM as well, which is, and I'm specifically leading to the journalists using AI one. Yeah.

It kind of feels like all of these egentic, quote, unquote, processes are taking, up more energy than just doing them normally. Yep. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Way more. Yeah, because like, you know, all of this just feels like people trying to avoid the hard work of having to think, right? especially if you're looking at people using this instead, you know, as a way of writing, the old saw is that writing is thinking. And I also think, you know, I mean, another old saw is that writing is rewriting, right?

And so when people say, oh, I'm just using it for editing and like, that's part of the writing process. If you're using it for editing, you're using it for writing. And that's like, that's not good. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite, unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

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Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. The story I've told myself about love or relationships, can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast deeply well with Debbie Brown and explore the journey of healing, self-discovery, and returning to yourself. We explore higher consciousness, emotional well-being, and the practices that help you find clarity, peace, and self-mastery in a world that can feel overwhelming.

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They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's going to be interesting. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the team everybody's talking about.

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He certainly doesn't, and I won't. But Alex Heath, Alex is weird one because he's been around tech journalism for 15-something years. It doesn't seem like a terrible bloke. But he describes this process of writing his newsletter. Let's see. Where he claims he feels like he is cheating. And I quote, Max F, the reporter, Wired. Heath sat down with me last week to showcase how he's integrated Anthropics, Claude Codd

code work, co-work even, into his journalistic process. The AI tool is connected to his Gmail, Google Calendar, Granola AI transcription service, and Notion Notes. He also built a detailed skill, a custom set of instructions, it's a text file, to help Claude write in his style, including the ten commandments of writing like Alex Heath. The skill includes previous articles he's written, instructions on how he likes his newsletters to be structured, and notes on his own voice and writing style. Then Claude Co-work then automates the drafting process that used to take place in his head, to your point, you were completely correct. Yeah.

After the agent finishes its draft, Heath goes back and forth with it for up to 30 minutes suggesting revisions. It's quite an involved process and he still writes some parts of the story himself. But Heath says the workflow saves him hours every week and that he now spends 30 to 40% less time writing. Yeah, mate, how much time do you spend prompting? Yeah. And also 30 to 40% even if that's accurate. 30 to 40% less time in order to produce something that's writing in the smeared out voice of the internet. And yes, you're trying to get it to write more like you, but come on.

And also, you know, I just, I don't understand why they would be willing to relinquish not just the process, but also the sort of like intellectual ownership. I don't mean like, you know, in the intellectual property sense, but like the, like the, I wrote this thing. Yeah. And like the, the way. that you know something when you wrote it that you can't know even if you were there for the editing. Like, I know, I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm getting older as we all do until we die.

And as I get older, my memory is, you know, not as good as it used to be. I think it's still pretty good. But, you know, I have trouble remembering all sorts of things that I didn't use to have trouble remembering. But I know the stuff that I've written inside and out because I was in there, you know, in the trenches with it, writing it. Yeah. And, and so I know it, you know, chapter and verse. Why would you give up having that kind of knowledge of your own work and your own thinking? Well, that's the thing. Look, for me, with my writing as well, it's not just like the writing and the reading all that. It's, I will be writing something and I will think, and in my case, it would be like, didn't the information mention in June 2024, the Open AI's annualized

revenue. I will go through an insane chain of events in my brain, but it's because of my interaction with the work that I remember that stuff. It isn't just, and then I linked a thingy and then it was way, that reminds me of something I was working on in 2024, 2025. And I'm not sure that I'm not sure that these people have had that joy of an experience. Yeah. I don't even mean this condescendingly. I just mean there is a certain joy. to being like, way, I remember this and digging something out that you painstakingly read and probably didn't even use at the time. Yep. Yeah. No, that's exactly. And it, it sucks. And also, it seems like more work. Yes, I agree. This seems like way more work to me. Like, I am, okay, I connect all of these

things, and I make sure they work, and I've written a long text document. Also, he says that it's got all of his old articles in it. Wouldn't that fill up that context window? Anyway. Putting all that technical stuff aside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I just, I don't understand. Because, like, if you don't write it, then you're not thinking your way through it. And like, yeah, okay, I go into writing something and I have sort of an idea of what it's going to be. But it's as I write it that I realize what I actually think about these things.

And I get to a spot in the writing where I'm stuck. And I realize, oh, I'm stuck because there was something that I thought I understood or to, ideas that I thought were connected. Now I'm realizing that connection is is less clear or my understanding is less good than I thought it was. And so I have to sit down and work it out or I have to go check an idea that I realized I was taking for granted and maybe it wasn't true. And like, and then this stuff is out there in the world with my name on it. And I just can't imagine having something out in the world with my name on it that I wasn't, you know, dead sure of and felt that I had thought my name.

own way through on. Otherwise, I die of shame. I, same. Yeah. Like, I fuck stuff up. I make typos. People love to email me about them. And they sure do more than they say nice things, in fact. But it's, it's the beauty of that, beauty of that fuck up that makes it mine. Yeah. But on top of that, yeah, though I, you have said this in Cal Newport recently said it as well, where it's, people are scared of thinking. Yeah. And I extend their. that to, and Cal also said, concentration. Yeah. I extend it to friction. I think that that moment you just described when you're like, wait, what does, what does that mean? What does that mean? Wait, what do you, well, no, wait, I don't get that. Yeah. That moment is deeply uncomfortable. That is

introspection. Yeah. Like, and it sucks. And when you don't, like, I spend a lot of last night learning about the Japanese economy because me curious little critter and it does tie into things in worrying ways. But, and there were moments from like, great, okay. Oh, I'll, the plaza record what's that oh christ i have to learn another thing oh what's the oh there's some sort of dilemma oh japanese economies and there were constant points from like what this this why am i fucking stupid why don't i understand this but that's how you get smart that's how you learn thing and you i don't see how you do that having an l l lm burp stuff up for you even if it's based on things you have said yeah no i think that's exactly right um yeah also

if it's just reading stuff you've written before, is that, like, at some point, it's going to stop being you entirely because it's just, eventually it's just going to be more AI than person. Very weird. Yeah. No, I completely agree. And you're also, I mean, this to me is bringing me back to something that I said, I think, the first time I was on your podcast, which is that in a way, this is taking. the sort of billionaire experience and making it like the billionaire cognitive experience and making it available for everyone because billionaires never have to do anything uncomfortable like think.

Yeah. I mean, it's also reminding me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which I just found and I'm going to read it to you. Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost $20,000. and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences.

In terms of cognitive impairment, it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day. Yeah, I think I'd be fine, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would be good. I think a billion dollars I'd be just fine. Feels like a skill issue to me.

Oh, it's definitely a skill issue, although you're also of the, you know, that the arrested. development meme of like, no, it never works for anyone else, but it just might work for us. Yeah, exactly. People fool themselves and to think this would work for them. Yeah. And I also think that there is a busy box mentality to it as well.

When you start using these things and it's very clear from the moment you start using them that they will not just do anything on their own. You can't just be like, do this. Yep. Like just check this out. What do you like, will you do this and it spits it out? Lots of stories about things being. one-shot it, but very few actual examples that matter to me or really anyone I talk to. It's like,

oh, it fixed one problem, but you can't just say do this entire task. So once you've done that, I don't know, my reaction to that is always, the fuck is this. I don't log onto a website, have it break and then go, that's okay. I use another website. But I think that there is something about the experience that because it's so convoluted and you have to contrive all of these little do hickies like fucking peewee Herman making breakfast. Yet when you get to the end of it, you're like, wow, I'm so smart. I made the, I made it do this, but also I'm going to give it credit for the thing that I ended up doing most of the work on, if I'm honest. Right. I mean, but this is also, this is part of why I think the people who are most convinced

that this is going to take over every job and one shot everything are so often software engineers because, yeah, okay, this thing is changing the way that people code and does seem to be able to write some code for some people. But, you know, that's a limited human task, right? And even for people whose job is, you know, to be a software engineer, the actual writing of code is just one part of what the job is. And the thing that's, I think that the trap that these people fall into a lot of the time is they believe that their job, software engineering, writing code, is like the ultimate human intellectual achievement.

And so if you have something that can do that, it must be able to do anything. And that's just not true. And it can also, it can do that kind of. Yeah. Like it's like it can write code. Yep. But no one also can seem to explain what that means in the end because all these companies, it does sound like you've got companies where you've got a bunch of people

just not writing any code. Yep. And I hate to ask now what? Yeah. Like really, they're not firing anyone. largely across the entire software stack things seem to be getting worse so yeah good I mean it's question mark yeah I mean Anthropics Claude code you know code based dropped and they're like yeah we wrote Claude code with Claude code and then there were a bunch of coders in there saying yeah I can

tell that you did I also love that we're meant to be scared of Claude Mythos this thing that can find this obvious marketing trick yes that can find it. any number it can find every vulnerability and everything. Other than the fact it required human, human people to actually find the vulnerabilities and coaching. Yep. And indeed, like, one of the main exploits for BSD was not actually exploitable, you could just make it crash, like, and regardless.

Yeah. But they couldn't find the vulnerabilities in their own software. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm sure. Like, I'm very willing to believe that it's a helpful tool for finding certain kinds of vulnerabilities, but you're completely right. This is a marketing gimmick. Come on. It is, and it's also, I'm kind of honestly a little bit scared of how well it worked on people. Yeah. Like how many people were just like, yeah, this is the scariest thing ever?

I will. Because I couldn't see it. It's because we've got this, this narrative that comes out of these, you know, AI cults like the rationalists that, uh, that, uh, that. that AI is going to take over the world and be able to, you know, make itself super intelligent and end humanity once it's able to write its own code. And all of that's just a sci-fi fantasy, but, you know, it makes it very easy for Anthropic to do these sorts of marketing gimmicks or, oh man, I don't remember who it was who pointed this out, but someone, I saw someone online say, it's not just that it's a marketing gimmick,

It's also that this is a way of sort of soft launching it as an enterprise-only product that's not available to the general consumer. And you can tell they're kind of toying with that idea too, but it's not really obvious what the plan is. Yeah. Because the way they sell this shit is having one million different guys with an AI avatar on Twitter posting that this is what changes everything every time they do anything. Yeah. And I just, I've also been playing a fun game, which is called. go and try and work out what these big integrations do. It's not a very...

Okay, when I say it's fun, I mean it's exhausting, because I went on the Goldman Sachs in Anthropic. They're automating accounting and compliance roles. But don't worry, the firm is in the early stages of developing agents based on Anthropics model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. What are those functions? Who the fuck knows?

They don't say. They just don't say. they they don't because they probably don't have an answer I want to I want to see those contracts I want to see the actual outcomes but it's I mean this is kind of a vague point to say but I feel kind of insane that we're still talking about it on this level yeah it's still we're still talking about it like we're trying to establish whether the Sasquatch exists yeah I mean I just the the amount of vibe based crap around all of this like to me I mean because of my background as an astrophysicist, to me, like, the, the number one thing that is clearly just

vibes is this whole push for orbital data centers, which is just like stupidest fucking... I feel like we might have discussed this before, but it's like, isn't the amount of power they create, like, wouldn't they, isn't it an insane amount of power for like one megawatt? I haven't looked too deep into the tech yet. I don't, I don't remember how much. they like, I don't remember how like what the, what the numbers are for power generation, but I know that bleeding off heat is a serious problem. And so because like space is a vacuum, vacuum is an insulator. And so even though it's cold, you can't actually get rid of the

excess heat very well. And so you need these giant radiator veins that are bigger than the entire international space station just for one data center. Yeah. And it's just not going to happen. And that's just one issue. You've got the radiation. You've got the fact that you can't upgrade the damn thing without doing a spacewalk. Like, what the hell are they thinking? Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy,

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with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So I just looked up real quick. Projects like StarCloud aimed for roughly 8 kilowatt of power in early prototypes. That's not enough. Well, just to give you some context, an MVL 72 of GV2G200, 72 GPUs is about 142 kilowatts.

Yeah. So that's probably not going to work. No. That's an... But you know what? that's also insane. I read about that. I read a headline about that thing in the New York Times, read one in CNBC. It makes me think that if I was an evil person, like a, like a top hat and like a little curly moustache of some sort, like I could just get so far just being like,

yeah, you know, I used the model the other day and it actually is fully alive. It's fully alive. And it told me it's coming for your job specifically. And then just go on being verified and like give them the job. I'll be like, Yeah, the AI book came up with this, mate. They're coming for your wife. I would be on the front page in New York Times, terrifying message from British traveler. Yeah. I would just claim I was from the future.

That would be in the... Kevin Roos would be immediately intrigued. It's funny, I was about to say Kevin Roos would believe you. Yeah. No, I think he would hit me with a bean can like Sila in Heroes, little reference for those listening. Remember Heroes from decades ago? But it's just, it's frustrating as well because even though you got the big blinking warning signs, and you especially like, you've really gone deep into how nutty these billionaires are and how distant the things they're saying are from reality, it is, ours are still somewhat of a niche belief, which is strange still.

Yeah. I know. I know. It's like we're the reality-based community. And somehow this is not the dominant narrative or even more. one of the dominant voices in the narrative. Instead, it's like, okay, you know, there's a few of us, and the crazy people are just louder and have way more money. How do you see any of this going? Like, just you don't have to come up with a perfect dance here. I realize someone on the spot,

but it's like, how does this realistically go from here? Because even putting aside the economics, it doesn't seem to be getting better in a way that matters. Yeah. I mean, we're in a bubble. It's going to crash at some point, right? That bubble's going to pop. And at that point, I'm not completely sure what's going to happen. It's going to depend on, you know, where we are when the bubble pops, what happens, or what's happening when it pops. But, you know, I think that we're going to see a few things, right? We're going to see, I would like to, well, there's a few different things that could happen. Yeah, sorry, I'm stumbling over my words here. It's okay. It's okay. I think that what the tech industry or the leaders of the tech

industry would like to happen at that point is they would like to use the fact that by then, you know, they will have and kind of already have, you know, eaten all of the new computing hardware and, you know, created these giant data centers. and try to repurpose them for something else. Because at this point, you know, like it's, it's, you know, hard to get a stick of RAM if you're not using it for a giant data center. And I think they love that, right? They want everyone to be using cloud computing and not doing any computing on their own actual computers. So they want to, you know, take that power that they've taken and keep it.

And so they try to come up with with some other thing to be the next hype cycle that will incorporate. you know, the earlier hype cycles of AI and crypto and all the other stuff that came before and say, oh, no, no, no, this is the big thing and it's going to make all of the other things work and it'll be different this time. We promise, guys, we swear. The same way that they did with this versus crypto and it's going to be the same people shilling it both in the industry and the industry watchers, you know, the same way that Kevin Roos was a shill for crypto, now he's a shill for AI. In any event, that's what... Quantum. Yeah.

If you see Kevin, if Kevin Ruse writes about quantum, that's how you know the AI bubble is burst. Yeah, I think that's probably right. He's running for the exits. Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. But that's what the industry wants, right? You know, the other or another way that it could go is when that bubble pops, you're going to see the current AI backlash, which I think that outside of the tech industry, AI is not actually very popular at all. And I think that people in the tech industry really underestimate that.

And if there's a bubble that pops and that leads to a crash, that's going to supercharge the backlash against AI in a way that the tech industry is just not prepared for, I think. And I would like to see that lead to some kind of reckoning. So I want to be, I'm going to lead into a sentence that you're going to almost immediately guess what I'm talking about. I want to be clear that what happened to Sam Altman, the person who threw a Maltav cocktail, the person that threw that shot bullets. That is morally reprehensible. You cannot do that. It's disgusting. I'm against him.

I will say that I'm surprised that these companies are surprised. Because it's like, for the best part of four years, they have said, we are taking your job, we need everything. As you, a regular person, struggle to get credit or thrive or pay your. your student loans, like, everything's more expensive. Everything sucks. But we, the AI industry, get whatever we want. And our explicit goal is to take your job. And the thing we own will control everything and all sources of income and everything will go through us. You should be scared because we're scared too. I feel like they should have seen this. I don't think it should have happened to them. I want to be really clear for legal reasons. But it's like,

Why are they surprised? Like, this is exactly the, like, you've been scaring mental, you've been scaring everyone, but mentally unstable people will also get scared. Yeah. And it's horrible. And it's horrible because it's like, I don't want more of this to happen, but I don't see how it stops. Yeah. No, I mean, I, they are not used to their actions having consequences.

Yes. And again, you know, billionaire. brain, right? When you're a billionaire, your actions pretty much don't have consequences. In a way, again, what happened with Sam Altman and the Molotov Cogtale that is morally reprehensible, that stuff should not happen. But in a way, the reason that was a headline was that it was a billionaire who almost faced a consequence. Yes. And someone who has said, and it was, I've recently checked this, since I think it was April, 23, Sam Altman has been saying, I'm scared of what we're building.

Yeah. Dario Amadee has been saying for years, this will destroy all white color labor. Yep. They have been saying, we always need more computer. And as I think the regular people face this as well, I don't think an average person feels like they are taken super seriously by the world. Yeah. The world does not feel hospitable to the average person.

But every time an AI person says literally anything, it's one page news. And it's taken with the complete seriousness. The government has meetings about it. Yep. So, yeah, I don't know. Why would people possibly feel angry about any of the... It's just... The thing that I'm saying is saying in a newsletter as well, it's like,

I think these people should tone down... They've said that we need to tone down the rhetoric. I agree. I think that they should stop talking about the models the way they do. Yeah. I also don't see this alarmism with the AI psychosis. Yeah. No, I mean, it's really striking the things that they're willing to sort of incite a moral

panic about in the things that they won't, right? They want to get people worried about this stuff taking all white collar jobs. They want to get people worried that it's powerful enough to destroy the world and that it's the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. And they don't want to talk about the people right now who are, you know, going insane and dying because of the existing products that we already have. Yeah. And I think also here's the thing that you will, did you see the one of the blokes, one of the blokes, the one of the blokes, the one who threw the Molotov cocktail, apparently he had posted Yodkowski's, if they build it, we'll shit myself, whatever it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, everyone does.

Yeah. Just like, oh, I don't know. Are you surprised that people who have, that you've monetized scaring people. Uh-huh. and people are scared? Yeah. Yeah. No, and I mean, you know, for all that Altman says that he disagrees with Yudkowski,

Altman also said that he thinks Yudkowski probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, which I just... Which is one of the more... What for? Yeah. Like, what possibly for? Strangest man. Yeah.

No, these guys are just nuts. Weirdest guy. Weirdest guy we have to hear from. Yudkowski with the Nobel Peace Prize for Strange Boy, weirdest, most unnecessary Harry Potter fanfic. Yeah, definitely the most. New categories in the Nobel. But it's just, no, but that's the thing.

It's like, to your point, yeah, it's exactly, it is something that Altman claims to not endorse, but wholeheartedly does. Oh, yeah. And what's also interesting is, haven't heard anything from Dario Amadeh about him. Nope. I don't know, you'd think within a situation like this, Dario Amadeh, we're going and be like, oh, I'm so sorry it's happening to Sam, Altman is terrible, but it's nothing.

Yeah, no, that is a good point. I hadn't thought of it. Kind of respect it. Yeah. Because, like, we've really not had men of industry who just fucking hate each other in a while. So I think it's nice to see, nice to see like some classic robber baron shit, but it's, and now, as of the morning of recording this, open AI, an internal memo with a clear purpose of being leaked, saying that Anthropic is overstating their revenues.

It's just, it's really, we are getting into the funny part, at least. Yeah, the cool zone, as it were. Yes, exactly. That's where we're on. It's so unfortunate. It really, like, on one level, it's very funny on that. It's just like, we could be doing a finhouse. Yep. No, I mean, these guys love talking about opportunity costs. And I'm like, what about the opportunity cost of, like, you fucking, how? having your money and your position in society. Because I think that that's just enormous for like the opportunity cost of having a Sam Altman or having an Elon Musk is just so enormous.

And they never fucking talk about it because of course they don't. Have you seen, did you hear about SpaceX's excellent economics? They lost $5 billion last year. Oh, God. No, I hadn't heard that. I've been busy with other, like with launching my new podcast. enjoying your life rather than reading Elon Musk about Elon Musk. I will give Elon Musk credit. He has invented a new way to fuck up his company. Just like attaching an AI company to SpaceX, which has

useful products like Starlink that people seem to like. Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, if it works, then he has to fuck it up, right? The same way he did with Twitter. Talking to billionaires, have you been looking at Gary? tan? No, actually, I haven't. What's he been up to? So he's the head of Y Combinator, and he's currently experiencing his own AI psychosis of sort, because he's become, he's become this weird, like he has this thing called G-stack, which is his Claude Code set up, and it's just, it's literally just at Claude.md.m.D., I believe, it's like, and it has, people really like it, because people want to get into Y Combinator. Right. So they say nice things. But it's been very,

funny because apparently his website just has like tens of thousands of lines of code on it. It's like it's, it kind of feels like watching a kid at a cinema arcade machine. And they just kind of like pull, they're not got any money in it. They just put it at the wheel. Like Ridge Racer or something or like Time Crisis, they got the gun pointing at the screen. No money in there. It's just very weird because I keep getting back to this thing. It's like the glasses from they live.

we're finally seeing who the dunces truly are. All of these people who are allegedly smart are actually the literal opposite. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Well, why don't we wrap it up there? Yeah. Adam, tell us about this new podcast. What sort of things have you got coming down the pike?

What plans have you got? Let's end on a high note. Absolutely. So the podcast, again, is called Dreaming Against the Machine. And we're launching, I've made. as of this recording, we're launching tomorrow. It was our first real episode. And we have a bunch of great guests coming up.

You're one of them, Ed. And we've also got, who else do we have? We've got a bunch of the original AI bias people like Sophia Noble and Kathy O'Neill. We've got some great sci-fi people like Kim Stanley Robinson coming on the podcast. podcast. Hell yeah. And, you know, some really great scientists as well, like John DePrescott Weinstein, who we're talking with about Star Trek.

And also, you know, some amazing haters like you or Dave Karp. So, yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. The conversations have already, we've already got a few episodes in the can of those conversations have been great. And basically it's going to be a place to try to figure out what a good future might look like and try to look for some hope and be really cringingly sincere and earnest because that's kind of my entire deal. And I think that's the only way to fight against the darkness, really. Yeah. Like it's the only the only real way forward for the light to win is to actually be sincere about the things we like.

Because as much of a hate as I am, I do love the people in this community and the people are like, you're awesome. Like, we can have cool conversations on this show that are not happening elsewhere. I'm glad that someone is doing something positive. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, that was the idea. It's like there's enough darkness out there.

If we want to, if we want to win this thing, it's not enough to say what we don't like. We got to talk about what we want. Hell yeah. Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me. We will link to all of your various. escapades in the episode notes, flawless there, just going to keep going. I am, of course, Ed Zittron. You can find me on a monologue this week.

I'm not going to surprise you with Ronan Farrow interview again. But yes, thank you all for listening, of course. You catch us on the monologue. And we'll have some fun interviews coming up, everyone. Got the boys from this machine kills coming as well. Anyway, catch you on the monologue, everyone. And thank you, Adam, for joining us. Thanks, Ed, for having me.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattersowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at EZ at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's Your Ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R-S-Betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

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