Better Offline - Radio Better Offline: Allison Morrow, Paris Martineau & Ed Ongweso Jr.
Episode Date: April 9, 2025Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Allison Morrow of CNN, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble ...newsletter, and Paris Martineau of The Information to talk about the collapse of the AI bubble, the goofy “AI 2027” fan fiction that has gone viral in the tech industry, and how the tech media faces a reckoning once the bubble truly bursts. Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/business Vote for Weird Little Guys in this year’s Webby’s! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/crime-justiceAllison Morrowhttps://www.cnn.com/profiles/allison-morrowhttps://bsky.app/profile/amorrow.bsky.socialEd Ongweso Jr.https://thetechbubble.substack.com/https://bsky.app/profile/edwardongwesojr.com Paris Martineauhttps://www.theinformation.com/u/parismartineau?rc=kz8jh3 https://bsky.app/profile/paris.nyc https://ai-2027.com/ New York Times article on AI 2027 - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/technology/ai-futures-project-ai-2027.html CNN - Apple’s AI isn’t a letdown. AI is the letdown - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html CNN - The AI bubble may not be bursting, but tariff chaos is sure helping to deflate it https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/business/ai-bubble-markets-tariffs-nightcap/index.html WSJ - How Is SoftBank Funding Its Mega Investment in OpenAI? A Lot of Debt - https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/openai-softbank-investment-debt-51b4a130 TechCrunch - OpenAI reportedly mulls buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI hardware startup - https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-buying-jony-ive-and-sam-altmans-ai-hardware-startup/ --- 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/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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What's up?
What is up?
Edward and Guaso of the Tech Bubble newsletter.
Hello, hello.
And the wonderful Alison Murrow of the CNN Nightcap newsletter.
Hi.
And Alison, you wrote one of my favorite bits of media criticism I've ever read recently.
Do you want to actually walk us through that piece?
Because I think I will link it in the notes.
Don't worry everyone.
I'd be happy to.
I wrote a piece.
I think the headline we ended up with was like Apple's AI is not the disappointment.
AI is the disappointment.
And this was inspired by credit to where it's due.
I was listening to Hard Fork with Kevin Ruse on our,
my husband and I were driving out to the country and listening to this and just getting infuriated.
Yeah.
And basically their premise was, or at least Kevin Ruse's premise was that AI is failing, or sorry, that Apple is failing this moment in AI.
Right.
And Apple has been trying, it's been like the lack.
You know, that's a narrative we've heard in tech media over and over.
And it's like, Kevin Rousse's point was like, oh, well, they should just start getting more comfortable with experimenting and making mistakes and, you know, violating everything that Apple brand kind of stands for and, like, force the AI into a consumer product that no one wants.
And I was like, respectfully, no.
It's also such a funny argument given that it was a mistake being made by Apple that resulted in the whole hootie PC small group situation.
Wait, what was that? Walk us through that.
That was specifically how the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic ended up in a secret military signal chat.
Wait, I missed. What? How have you missed this? I missed this. I missed this tip.
What? I'm sorry, have you guys not been online?
I don't use the computer.
Or better off line.
Oh, gosh, I should leave them.
I've been reading the scrolls.
So basically the Atlantic came out a couple weeks ago with a article about how their editor-in-chief one day was suddenly added to a signal group chat.
Right. Signal gate.
Yeah, signal gate.
But how did this Apple leave this?
So the Apple thing was, I'm forgetting who exactly reported this, this was in the last couple of days, that how it happened was the, like, you know that thing that comes up in your iPhone where it says like,
Oh, a new phone number has been found.
Yeah, it was a suggested contact.
And it happened because someone, I guess, in the government
had copied and pasted an email containing the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic's contact information
in a message to, I'm forgetting whatever government official.
Yeah, one of the guys.
And so he ended up combining the Atlantic's information into a contact for some government-d-do-
And that's how they ended up in, because it then signal when you connected to your contacts.
I love the computer so much.
So, I mean, that's, that makes me even crazier about the hard fork take because it's like, you can't mess around with something like your phone.
Well, in this particular instance, I take it all back.
Apple AI is amazing.
It gave us one of the best journalism stories of the year.
You also made a really good point in here.
As I messaged you this on the way, and you said, you made this point that there's a popular adage in policy circles that the party can never fail.
It can only be failed.
It is meant as a critique of the ideological gatekeepers who may be, for example, blame voters for their party's failings rather than the party itself.
The same fallacy is taking root among AI's biggest backers.
AI can never fail.
It can only be failed.
And I love this because it's you get people at Kevin Ruse.
And there was a wonderful clip on the New York Times TikTok of Kevin Ruse seeming genuinely pissy.
He was like, I can't believe people are mad at AI because of Siri.
And it's like, oh, what?
They think it's shitty because it's shitty.
Like it's like they talk about AI.
like it's their child.
Him and Casey act as if we've hurt
Chad Cheapy. Sorry, Claude.
They're anthropic boys.
Insane that Casey's boyfriend works
Anthropic. I know he does the site.
It's fucking great. Anyway, it's just
so weird because it's like we have
to apologize for not liking AI enough.
And now you have the CEO of Shopify
saying, actually you have
to use it. Do you hear about this?
Yeah, he said what, that you have to prove your job can't be
replaced by AI.
Yeah.
Or else it will be.
And he also said that now it's going to be Shopify policy to include in all of the employee performance reviews, both for your self-assessment and for your direct reports and colleagues assessment, how much this person use AI?
And obviously, what's going on there is if you are not reporting that you use AI all the time for everything, you could get fired?
Do you?
Do you just try to overhaul hiring prices so that they could have AI first or AI only and then roll it back because they realize you can't replace all these jobs?
My question is, I mean, this is something that's brought up on the show all the time,
but who are these people that are encountering the AI assistant suddenly plugged into every app
and being like, yeah, this is actually beneficial to my life and this works really well?
Because it sucks every time I use it.
Well, you made the point in your article, Alison, as well, it's like, if it was 100% accurate,
it would be really useful.
If it's even 98% accurate, it's not.
Right.
I think that was the point that, you know, to his credit, Casey Newton made in the
episode, which is that AI is fundamentally an academic project right now. And it's like,
you can have all kinds of debates about its utility, but ultimately, is it a consumer product?
And no, it's just like it's failing as a consumer product on all fronts.
And what's crazy as well is, I'm surprised he would say that considering everything else he's
ever said. Because he quite literally has had multiple articles recently being like, oh, consumer adoption is up.
He had an article the other day where it was like data provided exclusively
from Anthropics shows that more people are using AI.
It's like, my man, it's 2013 again.
We're past this.
You can't just do this anymore unless you're you.
And so going back to Mr. Ludki of, Mr. Ludki of Shopify, I just want to read my favorite part of it.
It says, I use it all the time, but even I feel I'm only scratching the surface.
You've heard me talk about AI and weekly videos, podcast, Townholes, and Summit.
Last summer, I used agents to create my talk and presented about that.
So all this fucking piss and vinegar, and the only thing you can use it for is to write a slop-ridden presentation to everyone about how good AI is without specifying what it does.
I feel like I'm going insane sometimes with this stuff.
I mean, in one way, that's great, right?
The only place you should encounter it is maybe the team building retreat.
You know, that's the utility of this shit.
This reminds me a lot of like media 2012, 2013, where it was all pivot to video and what's our video, our vertical video strategy.
And it's like, okay, now what's our AI?
strategy. How are we injecting AI into everything we're doing? And it's like, well, to what end?
Yeah, this is the point. This is something that has been driving me mad, especially with
partnerships we're seeing between media firms and these AI firms. You know, these are these are
firms in the same sector that keeps lying to, uh, to firms about how if you integrate artificial
intelligence, this time, it'll optimize your ability to find an audience or to get revenue. And we can
include you in some esoteric revenue share program or it will be able to, you know, claw back
some of the eyeballs and the attention that you're interested in seeking. But each time,
it's actually just used to graft themselves onto services or to try to gin up excitement about
these products, right? What's insane is this company has a multi-billion dollar market cap. And I'm
just going to read point two. AI must be part of your GSD prototype phase. The prototype phase
of any GSD products should be dominated by AI exploration. Prototypes are meant for learning and
creating information. AI dramatically accelerates this process. How?
Fucking how. Like, that's the thing. I, I have clients in my PR phone will occasionally bring
the AI things. And I'm, every time, I'm just like, there's better fucking work. Like, just every,
and to their credit, they do. But it's like, I have clients I turn down all the time.
And I'm like, yeah, we're doing this. And I'm like, is this just the chat bot? And they're like,
no. I'm like, no. I'm like, oh, cool. Yeah, I don't think we're going to be a good fit
somehow, because you don't seem to be able to explain what your product does. But don't worry,
this appears to be a problem up to the multi-billion dollar companies as well.
It's just, it feels like the largest mask-off dunce moment in history.
Just these people who don't do any real work being like, it's the future, I think.
I don't do anything real.
And the pivot to video thing I think is actually a really good comparison because I remember being in New York at that time
being like, I don't fucking like video.
I don't like anyone.
I don't think I want to consume video in the way that what it was, I'm like Mike and everyone.
And they were like, oh, we're going to do this video and this.
we're going to do everything video.
Now, video first, no written content.
It's like, I don't know a single goddamn human that actually does that.
And also the other thing that Facebook was lying.
That Facebook was just over, just claiming, like averaging out the engagement numbers and everyone was wrong.
But that was the same kind of thing.
It's like very clearly the people who have their hands on the steering wheel are looking at their phone.
And it's fucking confusing.
But it's so much worse this time.
It feels more egregious somehow.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it feels, I mean,
We've had so many of these hype cycles kind of back to back to back from even the horizontal video days of Facebook to vertical video to whatever the hell the metaverse was supposed to be.
Literally in an ominous moment as I was walking in to record this, I saw a guy wearing a leather jacket with Biotte Biot Club on the back and I was like, God.
That's a age well.
Yeah, I was like that guy rocks.
What a cool dude.
But it's like, how long is this going to last?
I have been actually looking at the numbers recently, and I don't know either, because for SoftBank to fund Open AI, it might require them to destroy SoftBank.
Like, S&P is downgrading the credit rating potentially due to.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, I know.
We're really at this point where it's just like, we've gone so much further than like the Metaverse and Crypto, because those weren't really like systemic things.
But this one, I think it's just the narrative has carried away so far that people are talking about a thing that doesn't exist all the time.
I mean, in some elements, it kind of reminds me at the near the end or near the real peak is when we started also to see Metaverse and crypto, sustainable refi shit.
Actually, you know, we can fight climate change with crypto.
Oh, yeah.
Putting carbon credits on the blockchain.
And so there was a moment where the frenzy and the speculative frenzy led to like world transformative visions that were bullshit.
And I feel like we are heading there.
We're in that direction with artificial intelligence where, you know,
consistently we've been fed, oh, this is going to revolutionize everything.
But it feels like the attempt to graft it onto more and more consumer products,
more and more government services, more and more parts of daily spheres of life as a way to, like,
privatize almost everything or commodify everything.
It feels like downstream of the way crypto's attempt.
to put everything on a blockchain blew up.
Yeah.
I was thinking about this in a kind of like fundamentally cultural way
where I think at some point in the last 30 years,
there was a time when everything coming out of Silicon Valley was cool.
Whether it was like useful or world transformative, it was cool.
And there was like an edge to it.
And people were like, ooh, that's neat.
Disruptive.
Yeah, disruption was everything.
And like I think post like Facebook Cambridge,
Analytica era, like 2016.
Tech has just stopped being cool and edgy.
It's very corporate.
And like, I don't think the rest of corporate America has kind of figured out that Silicon
Valley is not the cool thing anymore.
And that they can't, they're fully capable of being wrong and lying.
Like that's the other thing.
They've gotten very good at fundraising and marketing.
But they're also not like kids anymore.
Like we talk, I still see people referring to open AI as a startup.
Former lucky as a kid.
Palma Locki is a kid who looks like leisure suit Larry and sells arms.
Which is...
He's almost a few little kids.
You're just thinking of wardrooms.
Just a little guy.
We refer to them as startups, but also I think one of the most accomplished parts of AI marketing has been like we always refer to them as labs.
Yeah.
So they seem like so academic and like good fundamentally.
And it's like these are companies.
Like some of them might be part of, you know, a research.
institution or a university, but a lot of them are startups.
Yeah, literal companies.
Yeah, they are companies.
Like, Anthropics, a public benefit, I believe.
And it's, it's just remarkable.
And I think what's happened here is that the narrative has gotten away to the point that
we're really, the Dunst-Mask off moment I mentioned is people like Mr. Ludkei from Shopify,
it's very clear he doesn't do any work.
Like, I think that anyone who is just being like, yeah, AI's the future and it's changing
everything without specifying anything doesn't do any work i just don't bob iger from disney said
a i's going to change no it's not bob how's it changing your fucking life you lazy bastard like
you're going to summarize your worthless emails that someone else reads as you lie on your scrooge mcduck money
yeah and it's just it's so bizarre but it feels like we're approaching this insanity level
where you've got people like shopify being like oh yeah it's going to be in everything as like
open ai burns more money than anyone's ever burned anthropic lost 5.6 billion last year report
by the information. It's done some incredible
fucking work on this, I should say.
And it just doesn't
make any sense. And it's
getting more nonsensical. You're seeing, like,
all of the crypto guys have fully become
AI guys now. And that was something I didn't like
talking about at first because it wasn't happening. And now it's
all of them. They all have AI avatars.
This guy called Jamie Burke is real
shithead. This guy was like a
crypto metaverse guy and he's now
a full AI guy. Another guy called
Bernard Marr, who is just a harmless
Forbes, like a kind of like an
NPC type, like one of the
hollows from Dark Souls walking around.
The diagram is increasingly becoming a circle.
Yeah, but he's onto quantum now,
which is a bad sign. That's a
bearish sign. When you got one of the Forbes
guys moving on to quantum,
we're cooked.
What about thermo?
Isn't there some like...
Oh, thermo, yeah.
Thermodynamics. There's some scam.
Thermodynamics.
Yeah, I'm going to become a thermodynamics influencer.
I know what that means.
I also know what that means, but
if anyone could tell me real quick,
But it's, I think, the most egregious one I've seen, I sent this all to you.
Ed, I think you and I have talked about this the most.
There was one of the stupidest fucking things I've read in my worthless life.
And it's called AI 2027.
Now, if you have not run into this yet as a listener, it will be in the episode notes.
I'm just going to bring it up because...
It is fan fiction.
It is that literally thing.
Throughout it, I was like, is this fan fiction?
This is fan fiction.
Oh, this is interactive fan fiction.
It is.
And you can hit the bun says, what is this?
How did we write it? Our research on key questions, what goals will future AI agents have, can be found here.
The scenario itself has written iteratively. We wrote the first period up to mid-2020,
and the following period, etc., until we reached the ending.
Yeah, otherwise known as how you write stuff, like you're writing in a linear fashion.
We then scrapped this and did it again. You should have scrapped it in all of it.
Now, this thing is, it's predicting that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade
will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.
We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess at what it might look like, otherwise known as making stuff up.
Not even over the next decade.
It basically says it's going to have superhuman, like catastrophic or world-changing impact from the next five years.
Like by 2023, we're either going to be completely overtaken by our robot overlords or like at a, you know, tenuous piece.
Yeah.
And it's insane as well because it has some great headlines like mid-2020s, China, wait.
up. I love that China was so far behind. You know, it's such a like, when did this come out?
This came out like a week ago, and I've been sent it by a lot of people. If you're one of the
people who sent it, don't worry, I'm not mad at you. It's just I got sent it by a lot of people.
This thing is one of the most well-written pieces of fan fiction ever in that it appears to be
like a Manchurian candidate situation for idiots. Not saying this is about the same thing,
but anyway, Kevin Roos wrote up the piece in full. He wrote,
wrote up a piece about this called, I'm just going to say, the AI forecast predicts some storms ahead.
Some storms. Some storms, my bad. That's not even an accurate description of all of the storms it predicts.
And the long and short of this, by the way, I have read this a few times because I fucking hate myself.
The long and short of it is that a company called Open Brain, who could that be?
Yeah. It could be anyone.
Anyone.
Open brain, they create a self-learning agent somehow.
unclear how. All layout is just that how many a terraflops it's going to require.
And it can train itself and also requires more data centers than ever.
How they get them, how those are funded. No fucking clue. Isn't explained.
Probably the easy, actually, this is the fuck. This just occurred to me.
Probably the only thing they could actually reasonably extrapolate in here is the cost of data centers.
That's the only thing. And they don't.
Probably because they'd be like, yeah, we need an actual trillion dollars to do this,
up thing.
I do also want to add in here that, you know, behind the AI 2027 is, you know, one
of the people connected to it, if I remember correctly, is Scott Alexander, who's this
guy that's part of the rationalist community, which is one of the, one of the groups that
overlaps with effective altruist, accelerationsist.
Yeah, you know, so if it feels like it's frothy and fan fictiony and hypey, that's because
these are the same people that keep, you know, that are connected to pushing constant
hype cycles over and over and over again.
And it's written to be worrying as well.
It's written to upset you.
It's written to be worrying, but it also, in the predictions for the next two years,
keeps talking about how the stock market is going to grow exponentially and do so well.
Nailed it.
The president is going to be making all of these wise informed decisions and having really
deep conversations with the leader of open brain.
And I was like, are you, that's why I asked when did this come out?
Because I was like, maybe this was written a couple of years ago.
No. But no, it is why.
Like literally it says...
Reilly like the Benad Jesuit kind of planning.
Like, okay, with the Poiseo Tataratch, he's going to be born.
He's going to lead us to the promise land.
It's not fuck up everything.
It's so good as well because the people who have sent this to me have been very concerned
just because they're like, this sounds scary.
And I really want to be clear, if you read something like this and you're like,
that doesn't make sense to me.
It probably doesn't make sense to anyone because it's nonsense.
This thing is, let me read just one cut from it.
The AIR&D progress multiplier, what do we mean by 50% faster algorithmic progress?
We mean that open brain makes as much AI research progress in one week with AI as they would in 1.5 weeks without.
Who fucking cares, Matt?
What are you talking about?
If a frog had wings, it could fly.
Like, what you...
And what's crazy is, and I know I beg on Kevin Ruse, it's because he's a nakedly captured part of the tech industry now.
I am in public relations, and I'm somehow less frothy about this.
That should tell you fucking everything.
It is insane that the New York Times, at a time when you have SoftBank being potentially downgraded by
S&P you have. Open AI raising more money than they ever raised, $40 billion, except they only
receive $10 billion, and they'll only get $20 billion more by the end of the year if they become
a non-for-profit, which they can't do. No, no, no, no, no. Kevin Ruse can't possibly cover that.
He needs to go and take a solemn-looking fucking photo of some ass wipe. I can't even get my phone.
I do really love all of the incredibly solid-o feature profiles.
I'll put the link in there for this. He's got 75 pockets on his tour.
Yeah.
My man is ready to...
Oh, that's where it is.
And it's just him, like, this guy's sitting with his hands class,
like, staring mournfully into the distance.
This is what you're spending your time on, Kepp.
And I'm just going to read some Kevin Roos.
The AII prediction world is torn between optimism and gloom.
A report released on Thursday decidedly lands on the side of gloom.
That's Kevin Roos's voice.
But my favorite part of this, by far.
I'm going to take a second to get it, because Ed I sent this to you as well.
Where is it?
So also a lot of this is, oh, here we go.
If all of this sounds fantastical, well, it is.
Nothing remotely like what Mr. Cockard to tell Joe and Mr. Liffland are predicting is possible with today's AI tools,
which can barely order a burrito on DoorDash without getting stuck.
Thank you, Kevin.
I'm so fucking glad the New York Times is on this.
And that was at the end of it, right?
You set up this whole article and it's like, these guys have these doom predictions.
And that's the other thing about the,
like the altruistic AI guys
all have told themselves this story
and they all believe it
and they think they are like
the prometheus bringing fire to the people
and like warning the people
and it's like you guys have sold yourself a story
with no proof.
I don't know.
I feel like they just scam artists.
Nothing about this suggests they believe in anything.
You can just say stuff. Look, it works.
Literally the second sentence in this
is that in two months
there will be personal assistance that you can prompt them with tasks like order me a burrito on DoorDash and they'll do great stuff.
There are so many things that go into ordering me a burrito on DoorDash.
What restaurant do I want? What burrito do I want? How do I want it to get to me? Where am I?
It can't do any of those things, nor will it.
He gazed out the window and admitted he wasn't sure.
And the next few years went well and we kept AI under control, he said, referring to one of the writers of the piece.
He could envision a future where people's lives were still largely the same, but where nearby special economic zones filled with hyper-efficient robot factors.
would turn out everything we needed.
And if the next few years didn't go well,
maybe the sky would be filled with pollution
and the people would be dead, he said nonchalantly.
Something like that.
You know, one of the things I really, really love about,
I don't know, it's just, it's so frustrating
because we're constantly fed these, you know,
sci-fi, esoteric futures about how AI,
powerful AI, superhuman AI, is around the corner.
And we need to figure out a way,
to accommodate these sorts of futures.
We need, and part of that accommodation means restructuring the regulations we have around it.
Part of that accommodation means entertaining experiments, grafting them onto our cultural
production, grafting them onto consumer goods.
Part of that means just like, you know, taking it on the chin and figuring out how to
use chat EBT.
But in all of this, just more or less sounds like you need to, the marketing is failing on you
and you need to step up.
Yes.
You need to believe.
You need to believe in this.
You need to do your part, you know, to summon God.
And that's the thing.
It goes back to what you're saying.
It's like you've failed AI by not believing.
Yeah, and if you're bad at it, it's your fault and not the machine's fault.
You just learn.
To Ed's point, I think, like, all of this, like, predicting of the future and this, like, revolution is, like, they have told themselves a story that is, this is inevitable.
Yeah.
And that there are no choices that the human beings in the room get to make about how this happens.
And it's like, actually, no, we can make choices about how we want our future to play out.
And it's not going to be just Silicon Valley shoving it down our throat.
And on the subject of human choice, if this shit is so powerful, why have their mighty human choices not made it useful yet?
Like, that's the thing.
And you make this point in your piece as well.
It's like, AI can never fail.
Can I be failed?
Failed by you and me, the smooth-brained Luddites who just don't get it.
And it's like, why do I have to prove myself?
And listen, you know, the Luddites, they have more grooves on their brain than Kevin.
So he needs to, I think it's worth embracing a little bit, you know.
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And, yeah, I feel like Rob Horning wrote this newsletter a few weeks ago that I think he was honing in on this point that LLMs and these generative AI chat bots and the tools that come out of them are in some ways a distraction because a lot of these firms are pivoting towards.
How do we, you know, create all these products, but also how do we figure out, you know, government products that we can provide, right?
How do we get into defense contracting? How do we get into arming or integrating AI into arms?
And increasingly it feels like, you know, yeah, your AI agent's going to be able to not going to be able to order your burrito.
But these firms are also, you know, at the same time that they're insisting superhuman intelligence is around the corner and we're going to be able to make your individual lives better, are spending a lot of time and energy on use.
cases that are actually dangerous, right?
And it should actually be concerning.
In generating kill lists, right, or facial recognition and surveillance.
Which is already being around that and isn't generative.
Yeah, and isn't generative.
But the firms that are offering these generative products are spending actual, you know,
the stuff that they're actually putting their time and energy into is, you know,
these sort of demonstrably destructive tools under the guise and the kind of murky covering of,
it's all, you know, artificial intelligence, right?
It's all inevitable.
It's all coming down the same pipeline.
You should accept it.
Yeah.
And it's, I think the thing is as well as those guys really think that's the next big money maker.
But I don't think anyone's making any money off of this.
No one wants to talk about the money because they're not making any.
Like no one.
Like I think I've read the earning schools.
I'm not going to listen.
Of every single company that is selling an AI service at this point, I can't find a single one that wants to commit to a number of the Microsoft.
And they'll only talk annualized, which is my favorite one.
A R.
A R, but the thing is ARR traditionally would mean an aggregate
rather than just 12 times the last biggest month,
which is what they're doing.
No, that's the classic setup used to be ARA.
No, I refuse to, no, I, my client's asses to the ground with that one,
because it's like you can't just fucking make up a number
unless you're in AI than you absolutely can.
It's just frustrating because,
and the reason I bag on Newton, Ruse,
other than all the others I've listed,
is the, I feel like,
like in their position and in the position of anyone with any major voice in the media,
skepticism isn't like something you should sometimes bring in.
It's not,
you don't have to be a grizzled hater like myself,
but you can be like,
hey,
even if this did work,
which it doesn't,
how does this possibly last another year?
And the reaction is,
no,
actually it's perfect now and will only be more perfect in the future.
And I still get emails from people,
because I said once on an episode,
if you have a use for AI,
please email me.
A regret of mine.
Every time I get an email like that, it's like, so it's very simple.
I've set up seven or eight hours worth of work to make one prompt work.
And sometimes I get something really useful.
It saves me like 10 minutes.
And you're like, great.
And what for?
It's like, I'll just some productivity things.
What productivity things they stop responding.
Yeah.
And it's just, I really am shocked we got this far.
I'm going to be honest.
At this point, I will never be tired because my soul burns forever.
But it's exhausting watching this happen.
and watching how it's getting crazier.
I thought like as things got worse, people would be like, well, CNN's stepping up.
But it's like watching the Times and some parts of the journal still feed this.
Also, the journal has some incredible critical work on that.
It's so bizarre.
The whole thing is just so bizarre and has been so bizarre to watch on the tech media.
I mean, I think part of it is also just because investors have poured a lot of money into this.
And so, of course, they're going to want to back what they have spent.
hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on.
And much of the tech media involves reporting on what those investors are doing, thinking,
and saying.
And whether or not what those people are saying or doing is, it's often not based in reality.
Yeah, I say as not a member of the tech media.
So I have like kind of a general assignment, business markets, econ.
That's kind of my jam.
And when I come, when like AI first started becoming the buzzword, like,
Chat GPT had just come out, I was like, oh, this sounds interesting. So I was paying attention.
Like a lot of journalists were. And, you know, like we've hit limitations. And I think part of the
reason it's gotten so far is because of the narrative is so compelling, curing cancer.
Yeah. We're going to, we're going to end. It's my favorite one, not my favorite one,
silliest one is like, we're going to, we're going to end hunger. Nice. Okay. How? How?
Also, the problem of hunger,
in the world is not that we don't grow enough food.
It is a distribution problem.
It is a sociologic.
It is a complicated problem.
What actually is AI going to do also that you're going to need human beings to distribute it?
It just like if you push them one step.
If you read the 2027 AI thing, it explains that the AI is going to give the government officials such good advice.
They'll be actually really nice and caring to poor people.
And what's crazy is, here's a thing.
And I'm glad you brought that up.
One thing I've learned about politics, particularly recently, but in historic means, when the government gets good advice, they take it.
Every time.
Every time.
Every time they're like, this will, this is economically good, like Medicare for all, which we've of course had forever.
And came close to numerous times decades ago versus now when we have it.
And I think the other funny thing is as well with what you were saying, Alison, is like, yeah, it's going to cure cancer.
Okay.
Can it do that?
No. Okay, it's going to cure hunger. Can it do that? No. Okay, it's easy then. Perhaps it could make me an appointment. Also, no. Can you buy something with it? No. Can it take this spreadsheet and move stuff around? Maybe. Sometimes. It can write a robotic-sounding script for you to make the appointment yourself. Wow.
You know? I mean, I would even say that, like, I could give the benefit of the doubt to researchers who are really working on the science.
scientific aspects of this. Like, I don't, I'm not a scientist. I don't know how to cure cancer,
but if you're working with an AI model that can do it, like, God bless. But businesses actually do
take money-making advice and money-making technology when it's available. And I think about this
all the time with crypto, which is another area I cover a lot, it's like, if it were the miracle
technology that everyone or its proponents have said it is, businesses would not hesitate to rip up
their infrastructure to make more money. And like, no one's doing it. And it's like, oh, well,
they just haven't, they haven't figured out how to optimize it yet. And it's like, that sounds like a
failure of the product and not a failure of people using it. So I get back to the whole like,
A, yeah, it cannot fail. It can only be failed. And it's the same with crypto and a lot of other
tech where it's just like, this is not a product that people are hankering for. And I think part of
the notable thing is when we do see examples of large business,
is being like, oh, yeah, we're going to change everything about our business and integrate
AI.
We're going to be an AI first company.
The products that end up coming out of that are there's an AI chatbot in my one medical
app now.
Cool.
That does nothing for me.
When I'm trying to search the Amazon comments on a product, suddenly the search box
is replaced with an AI chat bot.
That's not doing even one-tenth of what you've promised.
It's also the same product every fucking time.
It's just an AI-
chatbot that isn't super helpful.
And it's great. I remember back in
2015, 2016, I had an AI
chatbot company. They took
large repositories of data and turned
it into a chatbot you'd use.
I remember pitching reporters at the time and then
being like, who fucking cares? Who gives
the shit? This will never be. It's like a decade later
everyone's like, this is literally God.
I cannot wait to go to the office
of a guy who wrote fan fiction
about this and talk to him about how
scared I am now. I can't wait for
AGI. And I've also said this
before, but what if we make AGI, none of them
are going to do it doesn't exist, but and it didn't want to do
any work. That's the other thing.
They don't, Casey Kegawa, friend of the show
at this point has made it to me numerous times,
which is they talk about AGI and Ruse did this as well.
They're like, AGI this, AGI this, they don't want to define
it because if you have to start defining AGI, you have to start
talking about things like person legit.
Like, is this a citizen?
Is this, can this thing feel pain?
Because surely consciousness could feel pain.
Oh, you could take pain out that has a real consciousness.
None of the, and hey,
how many is one?
Is it if it's, is it one unit, is a virtual machine?
Like, there are real tangible things.
And you know they don't want to talk about that shit
because you even start answering one of those
and you go, oh, right, we're not even slightly closer.
We don't even know how the fuck to do a single one of these things ever.
And I honestly, the person I feel bad for this is a joke,
is Blake Lemine, I think his name was, from Google.
If he'd have come out like three years later and said that he thought the computer,
this guy from Google who thought,
Oh, yeah.
The lambda, the AI there was...
The guy who was like, the chat butt is real, and I love it.
Yeah.
Had that come out three years later, he'd be called Kevin Roos,
because that's exactly what Kevin Roos wrote about being AI.
So every year is like being AI told me to leave my wife.
And Kevin, if you ever fucking hear this man, you're worried about me dogging you,
I'm going to keep going.
Do your fucking job, mate.
Anyways, it's just insane because I am a gadget gizmo guy.
I love my do-dad, I love my shit.
I really do.
If this was going to do something fun,
I'd have done it. Like, I've really spent time trying and I've talked to people, like Simon
Wilson, Max Wolfe, two people who are big LLM heads who are, do disagree with me on numerous things,
but their reaction is kind of, I'm not going to speak exactly for them, but it's basically,
it actually does this. You should look at this thing. It does not. This is literally God.
But it all just feels unsustainable economically, but also, I feel like the media is in danger
when this falls apart too, because the regular people I talked to about chat GPT,
I pretty much hear two use cases.
One, Google search isn't working.
And two, I need someone to talk to, which is a worrying thing.
And I think, by the way, that use case is just, that's a societal thing.
That's a sign the lack of community, lack of friendship, but lack of access to mental health services.
And also could lead to some terrible outcomes.
But for the most part, I don't know why I said for the most part.
I have yet to meet someone who uses this every day.
and I've yet to meet someone who really cares about it,
who, like, is like, if this went tomorrow.
Like, if I didn't have my little anchor battery packs,
I'd scream.
If I couldn't have permanent power everywhere.
Like, if I couldn't, like, listen to musical day,
that'd be real sad.
If I couldn't access chat GPT, I would not.
Who cares?
That's because you haven't tried Claude yet.
I've tried the shit out of plot.
I've tried Claude so much.
And it's just, I don't know.
I feel like people's response to the media
is going to be negative too,
because there's so many people that boosted it.
There was a verge story.
There was a study that came out today.
I'll link it as well in the notes.
Where it was a study found that most people do not trust AI, like regular people do not
trust AI, but they also don't trust the people that run it and they don't like it.
And I feel like this is a thing that the media is going to face at some point.
And Roos this time, baby, you got away with the crypto thing.
You're not this time.
I'm going to be hitting you with the TV off to share every day.
But it's just, I don't think members of the media realize the backlash is coming.
And when it comes, it's going to, truly, it is going to lead to an era of cynicism, true cynicism in society that's already growing about tech.
But specifically, I think it will be a negative backlash to the tech media.
And now would be the great time to unwind this versus tripling down on the fan fiction that, and I have been meaning to read this out.
My favorite part of this, by far, I say, and of course, flawlessly have this ready.
Why our uncertainty increases substantially beyond 2026?
Our forecast from the current day through 2026
is substantially more grounded than what follows.
Thanks, motherfired.
Awesome.
That's partially because it's nearer.
But it's also because the effects of AI on the world
really start to compound in 2027.
What do you mean?
They don't.
You're claiming that.
And I just, I also think that there's the greatest societal problem
that we have too many people who believe
the last smart person they listen to
and I say that as a podcast runner.
Like the last invest that they talk to,
the last,
expert, they talk to you someone from a lab.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I think that gets to, if you just push the proponents, and this is like I've come into
AI skepticism as a true, like, I'm interested in this.
I'm interested in what you're pitching to the world.
And when I hear, and I hear like CEOs of AI firms get interviewed about this all
the time and they talk about this future where everyone just has a life of leisure and we're
lying around, writing poetry.
and touching grass and like everything's great
and no one has to do hard labor anymore.
They have that vision or they have like the
the you know, P-Doom of 75 and everything's going to be terrible.
And but no one has a really good concept
and that's why this is so funny, the fan fiction of like what happens in 2027.
It's like no one has laid out any sense of like
how the job creation or destruction will happen.
Like in this piece they say like, oh, there's going to
be more jobs in different areas, but some jobs have been lost. And it's like, how? Why?
What jobs? They get oddly specific on some things. Then the meaningful things, they're like,
yep, there'll be jobs. Yeah. And the stock market's just going to go up. And the number go up all
the time, as it is right now as we report. Yeah. Yeah. I believe they say in 2028,
Agent 5, which is the super AI, is deployed to the public and begins to transform the economy.
People are losing their jobs, but Agent 5 instances in the government are managing the economic transition so adroitly that people are happy to be replaced.
I would not.
GDP growth is stratospheric.
Government tax revenues are growing equally quickly, and Agent 5 advised positions show an uncharacteristic generosity towards the economically dispossessed.
You know what this is?
We failed to uphold public arts education in America, and a bunch of kids got into coding and know nothing but computers.
and so they can't write fan fiction.
Yeah.
No one's fucking.
Not enough people spent time in the minds of fanfiction.net.
No one's been shipping anyone.
Like this is clearly,
this is just like someone wanting to have a creative,
like vision of the future,
and it's like,
it's not interesting or compelling.
It's joyless.
I mean,
that's why they brought him on.
That's why they brought Scott Alexander on
because to write this narrative, right?
Because that's what he spends a lot of time doing
in his blog,
is trying to beautify or fly,
out why this sort of future is inevitable.
Yeah.
You know, why we need to commit to accelerating technological progress as much as possible
and why the real reactionary or, you know, anti-progress perspective is caution or concern
or skepticism or criticism, if it's not nuanced in a direction that supports progress.
I just feel like a lot of the AI safety guys are grifters too.
I'm sorry.
They love saying alignment.
Just say pay me.
Like, I know that we should have, I get the occasional email about this being like,
you can't hate AI safety.
It's important.
It is important.
Generative AI isn't AI.
It's just trying to fucking accept it.
They're not, if they cared about the safety issues, they'd stop burning down zoos and feeding
entire lakes to generate one Busty Garfield, as I love to say.
But they would also be thinking about the actual safety issues of what could this generate,
which they do.
You can't do anarchist cookbook shit.
It's about as useful.
Phil Broughton, friend of the show would be very.
angry for me to bring that up. But the actual safety things of it steals from people is to
join the environment. It's unprofitable and unsustainable. These aren't the actual, these are actual
safety issues. These are actual problems with this. They don't want to solve those. And indeed,
the actual other safety issue would be, hey, we gave a completely unrestrained chatbot to millions
of people and now they're talking to it like a therapist. That's a fucking, that's a safety issue.
No, they love that. I do think that one criticism of the AI safety initiatives that is incredibly
politically salient and important right now
is that they are so hyper-focused
on the long-term
100 years from now future
where AI is going to be inside all of us
and we're all going to be robots controlled by an overlay
that they are not paying attention to literally
any of the harms happening right now.
Or are they deliberately not talking about the harms today
because then they'd have to do something at work
when they get each day.
You know, it's like when 972 Mag
reported on how Israel was using
or trying to integrate artificial intelligence
until generating gets killedess and targets so much so that they started targeting civilians
and used that to fine-tune targeting of civilians.
You know, I saw almost nothing in the immediate aftermath of this reporting from the AI safety community.
You know, almost no interest in like talking about a very real use case where it's being used to murder as many
civilians as possible.
Silence.
You know, and that's a real short-term concern that we should have.
But that would require the AI safety people to do something.
And what they do is they get into work, they're making quarter of a million dollars a year,
They get into work.
They load Slack.
They load Twitter.
And that's what they do for eight hours.
And they occasionally post being like, by 2028, the AI will have fuck my wife.
And everyone's like, God damn it.
No.
Not our wives.
Right.
The final frontier.
But it is all like they want to talk about 10, 15, 20 years in the future.
Because if they had to talk about it now, what would they say?
Because I could give you AI 2026, which is open AI runs into funding issues, can't pay
Corweave can't pay Crusoe to build the data centers in Abilene, Texas, which requires Oracle
who have raised debt to fund that, to take a bath on that. Their stock gets here. Corweave collapses
because most of Corwee's revenue is now going to be Open AI. Anthropic can't raise because the
funding climate has got so bad. Open AI physically cannot raise in 2026 because SoftBank had to
take on murderous debt to even raise one round. And that's just with like one minute.
You're going to be excited here. No, no, no. Next newsletter, baby, and probably a two-part episode.
That's the thing. They don't want to do these because they get, okay, they would claim I'd get framed as a skeptic.
They also don't want to admit the thing in front of them because the thing in front of them is so egregiously bad.
With crypto, it was not that big. Metaverse, it was not that big.
I do like that Meta burn like $40 billion and there's a Yahoo finance piece about this just on mismanagement.
It's just like they're also sick that they renamed themselves after.
It's so good.
It's so.
Can't go back.
Can't go back.
Yeah.
Like, they should get metai.
They should just change.
Oh, they could add an eye at the end.
An eye at the end.
It's just if anyone talks about what's actually happening today,
which is borderline identical what was happening a year ago.
Let's be honest.
It's April 2025.
April 2024 was when I put up my first piece being like,
hey, this doesn't seem to be doing anything different.
And it still doesn't.
Even with reasoning, it's just more.
You just wait for Q3.
Agent Force is going to.
Yeah. Agent Zero is going to come out.
Actually, the information reported that Salesforce is not having a good time
sailing agent force, you never guess why.
Wow.
Turns out that it's not that useful
due to the problems of generative AI.
If only someone had said something
which the information, I've bagged
on the information a little bit, but they are actually doing
insanely good work. Like Corey Weinberg,
Jurosawa, Alisa Gardizzi, Paris,
of course, but I'm specifically talking about
the AI. The AI team is fantastic.
And, like, it's great because
we need this reporting for when this is collapsed
so that we can say what happened.
Because it's going to, if I'm wrong,
And man, would that be embarrassing?
Just going to be honest, like if I'm wrong here, I'm going to look like a huge idiot.
But if I'm right here, like, everyone has over leveraged on one of the dumbest ideas of all the...
Like, silly, silly.
It would be like if everyone said actually crypto will replace the US dollar.
And you just saw, like, the CEO of Shopify being like, okay, I'm going to go buy a beer now using crypto.
No, this is going to take me 15 minutes.
Sorry.
That's just for you to get the money.
Actually, it's going to be more like 20.
The network's busy.
okay well how's your day
oh you use money huh yeah okay
yeah you should let that guy in front of me
this is going to be a while
but it's what we're doing
with AI it's like well AI is changing
everything how it's a chat
it's a chat book what do we have a Uber scenario
where maybe they abandoned the dream
of like this three trillion dollar
dressable market that's worldwide
they abandoned the dream of like being
monopoly in every place
and and
focus on a few markets
and some algorithm
price fixing so that they can figure out how to juice
fares as much as possible, reduce the
wages as much as possible, and finally eke out that profit?
What if we see, you know, some of these firms,
they pull back on the ambition or the scale,
but they persist and they sustain themselves
because they move on to some smaller vision.
I feel like Occam's Razor, that's the most likely situation,
is that, you know, AI tools are useful in some way
for some slice of people and make a lot of,
Maybe, maybe, let's be optimistic, it makes a sizable chunk of a lot of people's jobs somewhat
easier.
Like, okay.
Was that worth spending billions and billions of dollars and also burning down a bunch of trees?
Has that happened, though?
No, I'm just saying that could be, I think, best case scenario.
No, I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm just saying, like, we haven't even reached that yet.
Because with Uber, it was this incredibly lossy and remains quite a lossy business,
but still delivers people to them from places and objects from to them.
from places.
Yeah,
you know,
you don't have to,
you know,
as much as I hate them
or give them credit.
You know,
you don't have that,
no,
less drunk driving,
you know,
and some transit in,
in parts of cities
where there's,
there's,
there's,
there's not much in the way
of public transit,
right?
This is like if Uber,
if every ride
was $30,000.
Yeah.
And every car weighed
100,000 tons.
And when you factor in the externalities,
just like pollution,
maybe.
But that's the crazy thing.
I think generative AI is so much worse as well,
pollution-wise.
But,
Even pulling that back, it's like, I think open AI just gets wrapped into copilot.
I think that that's literally, they just shut this shit.
They're like, they absorb Sam Altman into the hive mind.
And he, I think there's a, my chaos pick for everyone is a Satchinadella is fired and Amy Hood takes over.
If that happens, I think is Prometheus the one who can see stuff?
I'm fucking, I don't read.
No, he gave fire to mortals.
Technate.
I just spit fire.
It's just frustrating.
It's frustrating as well because a lot of listeners on the show email me
and they're teachers of being like,
are they forcing AI in here?
Librarian.
Oh, there's AI being forced.
I mean, the impact on the educational sector,
especially with public schools,
it's really terrifying,
especially because the school districts
and schools that are being forced to use this technology,
of course, are never the private, wealthy schools.
It is the most resource-starved public schools.
starved public schools that are going to have budgets for teachers increasingly cut.
Meanwhile, they do another AI contract and off-source, like, the sort of things that these
companies, the ed tech AI things, pitch as their use case is lesson planning, writing,
report cards, basically all the things that a teacher does other than physically being there
in teaching, which in some cases the companies do that too.
They say instead of teaching, put your kid in front of a laptop and they talk to a chat bot for an hour.
And that's the thing.
And the school could, of course, I don't know, spend money on something that's already being spent,
which is teachers have to buy their own fucking supplies all the time.
Teachers have to just spend a bunch of their money on the school.
And the school doesn't give them money.
But the school will put money into chat, GPT.
It's just, they should ban it at universities as well.
Everything I'm hearing there is just like real fucking bad.
Like the...
I mean, the issue is from talking to a university.
professors, it's like impossible for universities to ban it.
Can you elaborate?
I haven't talked to any.
I guess professors are, the obvious example is like essays.
Like professors get AI written essays most of the time and they can't figure out whether
they are AI written or not.
They just notice that all of their students seem to suddenly be doing worse in class
while having similar output of written assignments.
There are very few tools for them to be able to accurately detect this.
and figure out what to do from it.
Meanwhile, I guess getting involved in trying to prosecute someone for doing this within the academic system is a whole other thing.
But on the, in K through 12, especially, it's been kind of, it's been especially frustrating to see that some of the biggest pushers of AI end up being teachers themselves because they are overworked, underpaid, have no time to do literally anything.
and they have to write, God knows how many lesson plans and IEPs for kids with disabilities,
and they can't do it all.
They're like, well, why don't I just plug this into what's essentially a chat GPT wrapper?
And that results in worse outcomes for everyone, probably.
So I have some personal experience with IEP.
I don't think they're doing it there, but they're definitely doing it elsewhere.
And if you've heard IEP, that fucking kills me.
That's one of the things that these tools often pitch themselves as is you can create.
I want to put my hands around someone's fucking
Can you describe what an IEP is?
I forget what it stands for.
I think it's individual education plan.
I might be wrong, but it's that's the vibe.
It is generally the plan that's put for a child with special needs.
So autism being one of the most obvious one.
It names exactly what it is that they have to do.
Like what the teacher's goals will be like socio.
They like legally have to do all the things in that document.
And it changes based on the designation they get.
And so like it's different if you get there's like,
emotional instability one I believe and nevertheless there's like separate ones and each one is like the goals of where the kid is right now where the kid will be in the future and so on and so forth the idea that someone would use chat GPT and if you listen to this and use chat GPT for at least I fucking hate your ass so bad I understand you're busy but this is very important and nevertheless wow what how disgraceful as well because it's all this weird resource allocation done by people and I feel like the overarching problem as well as it's the people making these decisions putting this stuff in don't do work
It's school administrators that don't teach.
It's CEOs that don't build anything.
It's venture capitalists that haven't interacted with the economy or anyone without a Patagonia sweater and decades.
And again, these VCs, they're investing money based on how they used to make money,
which was they invest in literally anything and then they sold it to literally anyone.
And that hasn't worked for 10 years.
Alison, you mentioned the thing, 2015-ish.
That was when things stopped being fun.
That was actually the last time we really saw anything cool that was around,
Apple Watch era.
Yeah.
And it was the last, really the end of the hype cycles, the real, the success ones,
at least, they haven't had one since then.
VR, AR, XR, crypto, Metaverse, the Indiegogo and Kickstarter era.
Sharing economy.
Sharing economy.
But these all had the same problem, which was they cost more money than they made.
And they weren't scalable.
And this is the same problem we've had.
What we may be facing is the fact that the tech industry does not know how to make
companies anymore.
Like that may actually be the problem.
problem. Can I add one thing to what you said about people who don't work? I think there are people
in Silicon Valley, and I'm going to get a million emails about this, but there are a lot of Silicon
Valley men who are white men who don't really socialize. And I think they are kind of propagating
this technology that allows others to kind of not interact. Like so much of chat GPT is designed to
like subvert human interactions. Like you're not going to go ask your teacher or ask a, excuse me,
or ask a classmate, hey, how do we figure this out? You're just going to go to the computer? And I think
that culturally, like I, you know, people who grew up with computers, God bless. But, you know,
we need to also value social interaction. And it's interesting that there are these, this very, like,
small group of people often who lack social skills.
propagating a technology to make other people not have social skills.
I think there's also a class aspect to that because...
Totally.
Don't grow up particularly with food on the table.
But one thing I grew up was I don't trust any easy fixes.
Nothing is ever that easy.
If something seems too good to be true, too accessible,
there's usually something you're missing about the incentives or the actual output.
So no, I wouldn't trust a computer to tell me how to fix something
because I don't fucking, like, you made that up.
Like, it isn't this easy.
There's got to be a problem.
The problem is hallucinations.
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So we didn't really lead into that ad break, but you're going to just have to like it.
I'm sure all of you were going to send me little emails, little emails about the ads that you love.
well I've got to pay for
my Diet Coke somehow
so back to this larger point
around chat GPT
and why people use it
I think another thing that just occurred to me is
have you even noticed that Sam Alman can't tell you how it works
and what it does you haven't noticed another of these people
will tell you what it does
I've read everything Sam O'Mon said at this point
to listen to hours of podcasts he's quite a boring twerk
but on top of that for all is the yapping and yammering
him and Wario Amadee
don't seem to be able to say
out loud what the fucking thing does.
And that's because I don't think
that they use it either. Like I genuinely
I'm beginning to wonder if any of the
people injecting AI, sure, Sam Orton and
Daryo probably use it. I'm not saying it fully, but
like, these aren't people. The next
person that meets Sam Altman should just
be like, hey, how often do you use chat
GPT? Gets back to the,
it reminds me the remote work thing, all these CEO
saying, gosh, come back to the office. How often
you in the office exactly?
And I think that this is just a giant revelation
of like how many people don't actually interact with
their businesses, that don't interact with other people, that don't really know how anything works,
but they are the ones making the money and power decisions. It's fucking crazy to me.
And I don't know how this shakes out. It's not going to be an autonomous agent doing whatever.
Also, okay, that just occurred to me as well. How the fuck do these people not think these agents
come for them first? If the AGI was doing this and they read this, they'd be like, God, these people
fucking, they worked it all out. I need to kill them first. Well, I mean, that kind of
gets back to what you're saying where it's like, you know, if we entertain the fan fiction for a little
bit, what is the frame of mind for these agents, if they're autonomous or not? How are we thinking
of them? Are we thinking about like if they're, you know, lobotomized in some way? Do they have
opinions? You know, and I think really it just gets back to like, you know, part of the old hunt for like,
you know, a nice, a polite slave, you know? How do we figure out how to reify that? How do we figure out how to reify that?
relationship because it was quite profitable at the turn of like industrial
capitalism and yeah I think you know it's not a coincidence that a good chunk of
our tech visions come to us from reactionaries who think that the problem with
capitalism the problem with tech development is that a lot of these empathetic
egalitarian reforms get in the way of profit making you know I think similarly you
know the hunt first automaton for certain algorithmic systems is searching for
a way to figure out how do we represent
you know, human labor without the limitations on extracting and pushing and coercing as much as possible.
Yeah.
With, you know, your agent or something else.
And the thing is, yeah, sure, the idea of an autonomous AI system would be really useful.
I'm sure it could do stuff.
That sounds great.
There are massive, as you've mentioned, like, sociological problems, like, do these things feel pain?
If so, how do I create?
Anyway, but in all serious, it's like, sure, an autonomous thing that could do all this thing would be useful.
They don't seem to even speak to that.
It's just like, and then the AI will make good decisions.
And then the decisions will be even better than Agent 7 comes out.
And you thought Agent 6 was good.
It's like they don't even speak to how we're going to get to the point where Agent 1 knows truth from falsehood.
I mean, that's inevitable.
Of course, yeah.
You know, we just need to give it all of our data and everything that we've paid money for or required other people to pay money for.
And then it will finally be perfect.
And it doesn't even make profit of any kind.
That's the other thing.
It's like people saying, well, it makes profit.
It's the profit seeking.
Is it profit seeking?
It doesn't seem like we've sought much profit or any.
That's also, I think, a good point of comparison to what you were talking about earlier, Ed,
with the comparison to Uber and lift these companies that achieved massive scale and popularity
by making their products purposefully unprofitable,
by charging you $5 for a 30-minute Uber across.
across town so that you're like, yeah, this is going to be part of my daily routine.
And the only way they've been able to squeeze out a little bit of profit right now is by hiking
those prices up, but trying to balance it to where they don't hike it up so much that people
don't use it anymore.
And AI's at the point where like for these agents, I think some of the costs are something
like thousands of dollars a month.
But they don't exist.
They don't work already.
And it's like you're still not making money by charging people that much money to use it.
what is the use case one where this even works?
And if it somehow did manage to work, how much is that going to cost?
Who is going to be paying $20,000 a month for one of these things?
And how much of that is dependent on what is clearly nakedly subsidized compute prices?
How much of this is because Microsoft's not making a profit on a Zill compute?
Open AI isn't making anthropicism.
What happens if they need to?
What if they need to?
They're going to check.
That's the subprime AI crisis from last year.
it's just
it's
well that's when you get
the venture capitalists
insisting that that's why we need to
you know do this air
capex roll out because if we build it out
like infrastructure then we can actually
lower the compute prices and not subsidize
it anymore yeah that's the thing
but that's the other thing so
the information reported the open AI says
that by 2030 they'll be profitable
how
Stargate
and you may think what does that mean
and the answer is Stargoy has data centers
now you have to I just have one little
question this isn't a knock on the information
This is they're reporting what they've been told, which is fine.
A little question with OpenAI, though.
How?
How does more equal less cost?
Because this thing doesn't scale.
They lose money on every prompt.
It doesn't feel like they'll make any money.
In fact, they won't make any money.
They'll just have more of it.
And also there's the other thing of data centers are not fucking weeds.
They don't grow in six weeks.
They take three to six years to be fully done.
If Stargate is done by next year, I will fucking barbecue up my Padres hat and eat it live on
stream. Like I will, that's if they're
fucking alive next year.
Also, the other thing is
getting back to 2027 as well.
Year 2026, 2027
is going to be real important for everything.
2027 or 2026 is when
Wario Abaday says that Anthropical be
profitable. That's also when
the Stargate Data Center project will be done
in 2026. I think that
they may have all just chosen the same year because
it sounded good and they're going to get in real trouble
next year when it arrives and they're nowhere near
close. I can't wait.
until all of those companies announce that because of the tariffs,
that they have to delay their timeline.
And it's like completely out of their hands.
But no, the tariffs, you understand the tariffs.
I got a full, I got a full roasted pig.
I'm going to be tailgating Microsoft earnings April 23rd.
Cannot wait.
Yeah, you should go to like a data sign.
You have a marching ban, well, the end of severance.
Yeah, it's, but that's the thing.
like they're, I actually agree. I think that there's going to be difficult choices. Sadly,
there's only really two. One, KAPX reduction, two layoffs. Or both. Because they have proven
willingness to lay off to fund their KAPX. But at this point, people are, like, they're asking
to what end? Like, why are we, why are we doing this? It just, it feels like the collapse of any good
or bad romantic relationship where just one party is doing shit that they think works from years ago and
the other party is just deeply unhappy and then disappears one day.
And the other party being...
This just happened.
I watched an episode of Lost last night and it just happened.
This is...
Lost is a far more logical show than any of this AI bullshit.
But it's...
Let's not get that crazy.
No, no, it's a bad show.
It's about...
No, I wouldn't say that either.
Talking about something that's very long, very expensive and never had a plan,
but everyone talks about like it was good despite a never proving it lost.
Yeah, sorry, I have some...
I really do have...
some feelings on that phone. You're going to get some emails.
I'm sure. You're going to get an email for me.
Yeah. He is texting email. It is just sending me
the vibrating. Vibrateable emotion
emoji like a hundred times.
Yeah, it's, I think it's just, I can't wait to
see how people react to this stuff as well.
When this, because I obviously will
look very silly if these companies stay
alive and somehow make a KGI. AI is killing me first.
Like the grave digger AI truck
is going to run me over outside my house. It's going to be
great. But I can't wait to see how people explain this. I can't wait to see what the
it's like, oh, we never, the tariffs maybe. Right. And I talked to an analyst just last week,
who's like a bullish AI tech investor. And he said, he said already you're seeing investment
pull back because of expectations in the market, that there was, these stocks were overbought
in the first place. And now there's all this other turmoil, external,
macro elements that are going to kind of take the, you know, the jargon of like the froth out
of the market. They're going to, it's all going to deflate a little bit. And so I was asking him,
like, is the AI bubble popping? And he says, no, but tariffs are definitely like deflating it and
delaying whatever progress that we are going to be promised from these companies is going to be delayed.
Even if it was going to be delayed, they were going to find other reasons. This is a convenient macro
kind of excuse to just say like, oh well, we need, we didn't have enough chips. We didn't have
enough investing. We didn't have enough compute. You know, be patient with us. We're going to have
the revolution is coming. What's great as well talking of my favorite Wall Street analyst,
Jim Kramer of CNBC. So Corweaves IPO went out. I just need to mention we are definitely in the
hype cycle because Jim Kramer said that he would sue an analyst, D.A. Davidson, on behalf of
Nvidia for claiming that they were a lazy Susan.
As in basically what the argument is is that
Nvidia funded CoreWeave, so the CoreWave would buy
GPUs, and at that point, CorWeave would then take out loans on those
GPUs for Cappex reasons, CapEx, including buying GPUs.
So very clearly, and also you attack Gill over at the A. Davidson, you and me, Kramer
in the ring. But it's, we know we're in the crazy time when you've got like
a TV show host being like, I'm going to sue you because you
don't like my stocks.
I think that we're going to see
like a historic washout of people
and the way to change things is this time
we need to make fun of them.
I think we need to be like actively.
We don't need to be mean.
That's my job.
We can be like, to your point,
your article, Alison, it's like, say like,
hey look, no, what you are saying is not
even rational or even connected
to reality. This is
not doing the right things. Apple intelligence
is like the greatest anti-AI
radicalization ever. I actually think Tim
so bad. It's so fucking bad.
And I, before it
even came out, I, like, downloaded the beta.
I was like, I'm going to test this out
because, you know, I talk about this
thing on my podcast sometimes. And it's
so bad. It's so bad. It's, I like
turns it off for most things, but I have it on
for a couple of social networks. And, I mean,
I guess with the most recent update
got marginally better, but it still
constantly tells me, so-and-so
replied, dear blue sky
skied, I check, they didn't.
That person didn't even like.
the ski. I don't know where that name came from. And this happens like every other day. It's just
completely wrong. I'm like, how? My favorite is the summary text for Uber where it's like
several cars headed to your location. You're going to take you out.
Calanick. Calanick mode activate it. No, it's great as well because I usually don't buy into the
Steve Jobs would burst from his grave thing. I actually think numerous choices Tim Cook has made have been way
smart on how jobs would have done. This is actually
like he's going to burst out of the ground, thriller
style. Actually, did, was that zombies pop out?
Anyway, because
it's nakedly bad. Close. It's not a great reference.
But it's nakedly bad. Like, it sucks.
And I've never, I've, people in my life who are non-techie
constantly like, hey, what is Apple intelligence?
Am I missing something? I'm like, no, it's actually as bad as you
think. And I mean, it's also small other things
beyond just the notification summaries.
The thing that every time I highlight
a word, and I'm
trying to, sometimes I might want to use fine definition or any of the things that come up.
I have to scroll by like seven different new options under the like right click or double click thing.
And if you hit writing tools, it opens up a screenway thing.
Yes, it opens up a thing.
And I'm like, who has ever, who is trying to use this to rewrite a text to their group chat?
Who is this for?
I feel like Apple, to its credit, is recognizing its mistake and it's clawing it back.
and like delaying Siri indefinitely.
I mean...
I don't know if I agree on that one.
That's fair.
Because the thing they're delaying is the thing that everyone wanted.
I think they can't make it work.
Because the thing they're delaying is the contextually aware, Siri, right?
Yes.
They're quote-unquote delaying it.
It doesn't exist.
It never existed.
We'll see.
Apple's washed.
You think apples.
I mean, but that's the thing.
It's the most brand-conscious company on the planet.
And I wrote like when they did their June...
revelation of the Siri AI is going to come out and they said it was going to come out in the fall
and then it was coming out in the spring and now it's not coming out ever question mark. But through
that the whole like two hour presentation, the letters AI were never spoken, art official was
never spoken, it was Apple intelligence. We're doing this, we're doing our own thing. It's not,
you know, because they already understood that when you say something is like, that looks
like it was generated by AI, you're saying it looks like shit, you know? And the suggestions are also
really bad too. I've had like over the last few weeks, a few people give me some bad news from
their lives. And the responses it gives are really funny. Oh no. It'd be like someone telling me
something bad happened and it's like, oh, or like I'm like, what was the worst one I had? It was like,
that sounds difficult. And it's like a paragraph long thing about like a family thing they had.
And it's not even got like any juice to it, like, I didn't read too long.
Those would be funny suggestion.
But like it can't even.
It's proof that I think that these large language models don't actually, well, they don't understand anything.
They don't know anything.
They're not conscious.
But it's like they're really bad at understanding words.
Like people like, oh, they make some mistakes.
They're bad at basic contextual stuff.
And we had Victoria song from The Virgin the other day.
And she was talking about high content.
and low context languages, when I say this is, I can only speak English, I imagine not being able to read or speak in any others, that it really fumbles those. And I, if there's, if you're listening, you want to email me anything about this research. How the fuck does this even scale if it can't? Oh, we're replacing translators. Great. You're replacing translators with things that sometimes translate, right? Sometimes. Sometimes. It just feels, also inherently, like, an actual alignment problem, by the way. That, that, that's,
Right there, that feels like an actual safety problem.
Like, hey, if we're relying on something to translate,
and it translates words wrong,
and you know, especially in other languages,
subtle differences can change everything.
Maybe that's dangerous.
No, no, no, we got the computer will wake up in, like, two weeks,
and then it's going to be angry.
And that's the other thing.
We're going to make AGI, and we think it's not going to be pissed off at us.
I don't mean Rococo's modern basilisk or whatever.
I mean, just like, if it wakes up and looks at the world
and goes, these fucking morons?
Like, you need to watch person of interest if you haven't one of the best shows on actually on AGI.
Like, genuinely, you need to watch person of interest because you will see how that could happen when you allow a quote-unquote perfect computer to make our decisions.
Also, when has a computer been particularly good at decision-making?
I don't know.
I feel like so much of this revolution, quote-unquote, is based on just the assumption that the computer makes great decisions and it oftentimes doesn't.
No, it often does not.
Why would I think that the same search function in Apple that cannot find a document that I know what the name is and I'm searching for it?
Why would I think that that same computer is going to be able to make wise decisions about my life, finance, and personal relationships?
Because that's Apple and this is AI.
Oh, that's true.
That's, that's, I'll show myself out.
I don't know how much is AI versus just like a good translation app.
Like I genuinely don't know like how Google.
Because AI is such a squishy term that we really don't.
Right.
In some way, like, I guess AI could be expanded to include a lot of modern computing.
Like, I can see travel in, like, emergency situations where you need, where, like, a good AI translator would be, like, a real lifesaver.
Just as a small aside.
I was just in Mexico.
And my stepkids were using Google Translate, and we were, like, kind of remembering Spanish and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
go into a coffee shop and I wanted to order a flat white.
And so I used Google Translate to say,
like, how would you order a flat white in Spanish?
And it said to order a Blanco Plano, which means flat white.
But, like, across Mexico City, there are wonderful coffee shops.
And you know what they call them?
Flat whites.
Because isn't it an Australian coffee or something like that?
I learned that very quickly with the help of Reddit,
because I went to the barista and ordered a Blanco Plano,
and they were like, who are you?
You crazy gringo cat out here.
Sorry, I speak English.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, like, it's, the functionality is very limited on those things.
And it's just like, also it gets back to like, if it's 100% reliable, it's great.
If it's 98% reliable, it sucks.
And just as an aside, did any of you hear about Joe, like the latest, like, quasi-fraudulent thing with Joniye if that's happening?
I just saw the headline.
No.
So Sam Altman and Joni I've founded a hardware startup last year.
No, actually I do.
Michael.
That has built nothing.
There is a thing they claim there's a phone without a screen.
Sick.
And Open AI, a company run by Sam Altman, owned, principally by Sam Altman and Microsoft,
is going to buy, for half a billion dollars, this company that has built nothing,
co-founded by Sam Altman.
Sick.
If I feel like there should be a one law against this.
No.
But it's just like, what have they been doing?
And this is just kind of cliche to say, like, quote the big short,
but like a big part of the beginning of that movie is talking about the increase in fraud and scams.
And it really feels like we're getting there.
And RIP to the humane Pimp, by the way, rest in piss, you won't be missed.
Motherfuckers, two management consultants, both like indignity, eat shit.
Jesse Lou Rabbit R1, you're next, motherfucker.
When your shit's gone, I'll be honking and laughing.
customers should suit you.
The description, so my colleagues of the information reported this journey of Sam Altman News,
and the description for the device really makes me chuckle.
Designs for the AI device are still early and haven't been finalized, the people said.
Potential designs include a, quote, unquote, phone without a screen, and AI-enabled household devices.
Others close to the project are adamant that it is, quote, not a phone, end quote.
And they're going to spend, they've discussed spending upward.
of 500 million on this company.
This is like a bad philosophy class where it's like what is a phone that's not a phone?
Sisi, Nippa, phone.
Semiotics for beginners.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Oh my God.
And that's the thing as well, like this feels like a thing the tech media needs to be on as well.
Just someone needs to say, I'll be saying it.
Like this is bordering on fraud.
Like it seems like it must be legal because otherwise there would be some sort of authority, right?
You can't do anything illegal without anything happening.
Hmm.
But it's like, this is one of the most egregious fucking things I've ever seen.
This is a guy handing himself money.
One hand, this is, should be for, like, this is, like, how is this ethical?
And everyone's just like, oh, yeah, you know.
This, Kevin Ruse, maybe you should get on this shit.
Find out what the phone that isn't the phone is.
What the fuck?
And also household appliances with AI, maybe like something with the screen and the speaker that you could say, like a word to it and it would wake up and play music.
Like a Roomba.
Yeah.
A Roomba with AI.
Just declared bankruptcy.
DJ Roomba.
Rumba dead?
A Rumba dead?
Why Rumba Dead?
I think they did.
I don't know, actually.
I remember I read the headline in the last few weeks.
They were supposed to be acquired by Amazon, but I think the deal fell through under Lina Kahn's FDCI, I'd assume.
Sick.
And then.
Got them.
Also, one quick note on the Johnny I of Sam Holtman thing.
I guess it's notable that Altman has been working closely with the product but is not a co-founder.
And whether he has an economic stake in the hardware project is unclear.
Yeah.
You know, he just seems to be working closely with it.
He just takes out.
He's just hanging out there and taking a salary in an equity position.
I do think it's very interesting.
All of these different AI device startups that have popped up in the last couple of years.
And my question for them is always just like, to what end?
People didn't like Amazon Alexa.
And it also lost a shit ton of money.
Yeah, and Amazon's still trying to make it work.
Siri's never been super popular.
And I just don't, like, one of my co-hosts on the podcast,
we're on Intelligent Machines, is obsessed with all these devices
just because he's like one of those tech guys, Leo, yes.
And we love to make fun of it before.
No, yeah, no, we love him.
But his latest device is this thing called a B.
We just have Victoria's song on talking about this, the thing that records everything.
It records everything all the time, and then,
makes, puts that up in the cloud
and then I guess doesn't store the full transcripts,
but does store a little AI generated
description of everything you did
and whoever you talked to that day.
And there's no way, I mean,
he was in California,
which is not a one-party recording scene.
You gotta get consent from everybody to record
and the B is not doing that.
But it's just baffling to me
because I'm just like, I guess,
he's like, well, it could be nice to have record
of all of my days all the time.
I'm like, I guess, but to what end?
Just record it.
Just record it.
Yeah.
Write it down.
Yeah.
Write a diary.
There's literally a Black Mirror episode about that.
I believe it's the first episode of Black Mirror.
Everyone has like a recording device.
And then it does, when I was, when you were talking about this on the show, I was listening, thinking like, in this Black Mirror thing, it reminded me that like when Facebook started having like all your photos collected under your photos.
and like how we started reliving so many experiences online.
It's never been pleasant.
And like look at how happy you were like six years ago.
You know, like, and it creates this like cycle.
Like imagine if every interaction, every like romantic interaction, every sad interact, everything you could replay back to yourself, it sounds like a nightmare to me.
I do think it's also just a night.
Like humans, we're not built socially.
to exist in a world where every interaction is recorded and searchable with everyone forever.
Like, you would never have a single friend.
Romantic relationships would dissolve.
Yes.
Eternal sunshine and the spotless mind, like great move.
But even then, like, memory is vastly different to the experience of collecting it.
Like, just existing.
Like, we are brain slot.
I don't know.
My brain just goes everywhere.
But, like, compared to memory, which can be oddly crystalline and wrong, you can just remember something.
You can remember a subtle detail wrong.
or you can just fill in the gaps.
Memory sucks.
Also, doesn't having like a device that constantly records everything,
a road at the impulse or maybe the drive to be as present, you know,
because you're like, well, like, I can refer to it.
It's also got huge privacy implications where suddenly the cops could just be like,
yeah, we're just going to take a recording,
we're just going to subpoena everybody who was in this area's B device,
and then suddenly get a recording of everyone's days ever
that just happened to be in this place,
because we think a crime could have happened there.
But I think that there's an overarching thing to everything we're talking about,
which is these are products made by people that haven't made anything useful in a while,
and everything is being funded based on what used to work.
What used to work was you make a thing, people buy it,
and then you sell it to someone else or take it public.
This only worked until about 2015.
It's not just a zero interest free era thing.
It's we have increasingly taken away the creation of anything valuable in tech
from people who experience real life.
Like, our biggest CEOs are Sam Altman, Wario Amadei, Sundar Pishai, MBA, former McKinsey, Satchinadella, MBA.
I mean, Tim Cook, MBA.
Like, these are all people that don't really interact with people anymore.
And the problems, the people in power are not engineers, they're not even startup founders anymore.
They're fucking business people, making things that they think they could sell, things that could grow the raw economy, of course.
And we're at the kind of the pornographic point where it's like a guy being like, what could
AI, what does AI do? Well, you can just throw a bunch of data and give you insights. Well, what if we just collect a date on everything happening around us ever? That would be good. Then you could reflect on things. That's what people do, right? And I actually genuinely think there was only one question to ask the B found on that. Are you wearing one of these now? And how often do you use this? Because if they use it all the time, I actually kind of respect them. I guarantee they don't. I guarantee they don't. And they'll probably say something around a lot of privileged information.
as opposed to everyone else who's not important.
And this fucking Joni, oh, it's going to be a phone without a screen.
What can you do with it?
I don't know.
I haven't thought that far ahead.
I only get paid $15 million a year to do this.
The question is also, who wants a phone without a screen?
The screen's the best part.
I love the screen.
I love to hate the screen.
But they don't talk to anyone.
They don't have human experience.
They don't have friends that, like, they have friends who all, like, have $50 million in the bank account at any time.
They just, like, exist in a different,
difficulty level. They're all going at very easy. They don't really have like predators of any kind.
They don't really have experiences. So they're, what they experience in life is when you have to
work out what you enjoy. And because they enjoy nothing, all they can do is come up with ideas.
That's why the rabbit R1. Oh, what do people do? Uh, order McDonald's. Can it do it? Not really,
but it also could take a photo of something that could be pixelated. That could all.
You could kind of order an Uber through it, maybe. What was great was the rabbit launch, the rabbit launch.
to order McDonald's live and it just didn't work.
It took like five minutes to fail.
It was, and that's the thing.
Like, I feel like when this hype cycle ends, the tech media needs to just be aggressively like, hey, look, fool me thrice, shame on me.
Like, like, maybe next time around we can ask the questions I was asking in 2021 where it's like, what does this do?
Who is it for?
And if anyone says, it could address millions of people, it's like, have you talked to one of the motherfucker?
One of them.
Well, I think we can wrap it up there, though.
Alison, where can people find you?
You can find me at CNN.com slash nightcap.
I write the CNN Business Nightcap.
It's in your inbox four nights a week.
Hell yeah.
Ed?
I write a newsletter on Substact,
the tech bubble.
I co-host a podcast, This Machine Kills, with Jathan Zatowski.
And I'm on Twitter at Big Black Jackabin.
You're on Blue Sky too, right?
Yeah, blue sky at Edwardongwesson Jr.com.
You can read my work at the information.
I also host a podcast called Intelligent Machines.
And you can find me on Twitter at Paris Martina or on Blue Sky at Paris.N.YC.
And you can find me at at Ed Zitron.com on Blue Sky. Google.
Who destroyed Google search?
Click the first link.
It's me.
I destroyed Google search along with Papa Gargaband.
Fuck you, dude.
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