Better Offline - Radio Better Offline: Cherlynn Low, Alex Cranz & Victoria Song

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by tech reporters Alex Cranz, Cherlynn Low and Victoria song to talk about the broken promises of generative AI, and how useless things get funded far more than useful ones. Alex Cranz: https://bsky.app/profile/cranz.bsky.social Cherlynn Low:https://www.engadget.com/about/editors/cherlynn-low/https://x.com/cherlynnlowhttps://bsky.app/profile/cherlynn.bsky.social Victoria Song:https://bsky.app/profile/vicmsong.bsky.social https://www.theverge.com/authors/victoria-song  --- 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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AllZone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline, in beautiful New York City, Nevada. We're on 55th Street, and I am Ed Zittron, of course, and I'm surrounded by incredible people. To my right is Sherlin Lowe of Engadgett. Hello. How are you doing, Sherlin?

All right. And we've got Alex Cranz, reporter critic extraordinaire. Yeah, I just like to be really happy about Nevada. It's beautiful here. Nevada is great. New York City, Nevada. It's sunny. It's warm.

I love it. People love it. And, of course, Victoria's song from The Verge. Hello, hello. Sunny New York, New York in Nevada. Yep. That's the thing. People think I do this accidentally. No one knows what I do deliberately, and that's because neither do I. So we were all just talking on the way in here about possibly the best tech journalism we've ever read. And it's a story by a guy called Kevin Ruse. He appears to be a child that who was allowed to write for the New York Times.

Article is called Powerful AI is coming, and we're going to read you a few sentences, and we're going to discuss this. Here are some things I believe about artificial intelligence. I believe that over the past several years, AI systems have started surpassing humans in a number of domains. Math, coding? Wait, math? Math? Are you fucking... Anyway, there is an article that was in the New York Times AGI thing that Kevin Ruse wrote, a child in a man's body like big, except Tom Hanks. He can act and actually complete his job, and Kevin Ruse appears to have a gas leak. He has said that possibly very soon, probably in 2026 or 27,

but possibly as soon as this year, one or more AI companies will claim they've created an artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is usually defined as something like a general purpose AI system that can do almost all cognitive tasks a human can do. If you believe this, you're a moron, I'm sorry. What do you think? Like, I don't know. I think he's, he's like gassing him up because he wants to flirt with more AI. And so like he needs an agent.

Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Flirt with AI, like, like, they're your girlfriend? This is the man who got AI to fall in love with him. Yeah, he was like, leave your wife. Yeah, yeah. And so like, like just. so funny. This guy.

It's so funny just being like he was really scared as well. He's like, oh no. Yeah. Like this guy,

you know, I've been using a lot of AI. I've been talking with these ladies about it a whole bunch. And I think of it, I love using AI

because it'll be like, you are the best writer on the pandemic. We were just talking about this. And I'm like, guess who told her to do this? Okay, guess who was just validating her decision to do this?

But you know, you use it. You love it because it tells you you're beautiful and pretty and smart. Even though none of it is true. It's not true.

None of it is. It's rise. It told me I could win a Pulitzer Prize in like a one to three year period. And I love that. Hey shit, AGI will be here by then. They will win the Pulitzer's. It will win the Pulitzer's. But it was just like, yeah, you could win a Pulitzer Prize.

And I was like, based on what criteria are you telling me this? And, you know, are you using Claude as well? Yeah, I was using Claude and chat chiefly teachers. It's like horoscopes. Right. When you get a cool horoscope, you're like, yes, this is awesome. You understand I'm a great. great Gemini.

Yes. But then you're like, no, but it's sucking not real because it's a horoscope. You are. And this man is out there being like. I don't know any horoscope stuff. But this man is out there like, you know what? I really believe that I'm a Leo and that this understands I'm a Leo. Well, let me read you one passage as well.

I believe that hardened AI skeptics who insist that the progress is all smoking mirrors and who dismiss AGI as a delusional fantasy, not only are wrong on the merits, but are giving people a false sense of security. And I just want to say, that is one of dumbest fucking things I've heard in my life. The people who criticize this are not actually, they're giving people a false sense of security, as opposed to the guy being like, the computer will wake up in two years. Well, because he's saying the danger of AI is AGI. When in fact, the danger of AI is the destruction of jobs.

Yes. And even then it's not going, it's not even doing that. It's taking away jobs from people who are already having trouble getting them. He's like, oh, Skynet's going to do it. No, Skynet's not going to do it. Elon Musk deploying whatever little chat GPT bot he does is going to do it. Get over yourself. AI is not infallible.

It makes up a lot of stuff that's wrong. And it's just, it doesn't understand how to be human in a lot of ways. Talk to this, Kevin. From that one sentence, though, I can tell who his audience is. He's talking about a false sense of security for whom, for the people that are developing the AI. Yes. Because none of us out there who have jobs that might be taken over by A. have any sense of security, the idea of an AGI that will be competent enough to take over jobs.

Right. So his audience, he's not talking to us. He's not talking to people who have jobs that might be replaced. He's talking to people developing the AI, the ones who want to make money from it, right? I also don't know what the full sense of security would be. Like, oh, don't worry, this isn't going to fuck them over. As opposed to the fact that you've got one company, soft bank, borrowing money to put money into open AI, which burns billions of dollars to make a pretty shit product. if we're like not something that you can find some cool things with fine but for the most part is the same thing as we if you're using any AI as a search engine you should stop a meeting yeah do not do i know sam altman you're listening to this right now wish and you are just so ecstatic about chat GPT you love it so much it is a terrible search engine it really is what is it 51% i think now at this point like there was a recent study 51% of the responses are false sick something like that like

Like, this stuff is bad at it. It's like actually bad. That's what drives me insane. You get an article in the New York Times being like, the computer is so smart. The computer is so strong. I love the computer so much. Because it told you,

because it's been, it gasses us up. It's been in all this time being like, you're smart and strong. So I must be smart and strong. If you talk to it too long about, it just starts nagging you. And then you're like, oh, I'm not smart.

I'm strong. It's very, it's just sort of like, you're a bit too self-loat. And it's like, you're so good. I'm like, I refuse to believe that. Between you and my therapy. this has never worked.

Nice try. You can't swindle me a computer. It's just so strange as well because ostensibly, you three are wonderful reporters like I've read you for years and it's like you're not cynics, but you are willing to be critical. Oh, I am hardened as they come when it comes

to the hardened people who don't believe it. You like the shit still. Like you're excited for it. This is not even excited for it. What's weird about this piece other than the fact it's just completely wrong in almost everything it says and clearly supporting billion-dollar companies, it doesn't even seem that excited.

It's not like, I can't wait until this happens, because imagine the cool shit that could happen. I don't know, come up with an idea, perhaps, that's like, oh, if I had an autonomous intelligence in my phone, it could plan my day for me. How delightful. Despite there being 17 different companies that claim they do this already on Instagram ads,

does not exist. But he could come up with an idea of something cool, but it's like, actually, AGI is coming. What is it? I don't know. It's inevitable, though. The thing that I can't describe is inevitable, and I don't know what it will do, but it will be good or bad. He's refusing to define AGI through the entire piece. And he's like, and it's going to keep being redefined.

And I'm like, if you cannot define the word, you can't use the word. Sorry. Sorry, we take that word back. Kevin, you're not allowed to use AGI until you can actually define it. I don't think you should be allowed to use the computer for a minute. Go outside. The theme of. Use the touch grass app and step away.

touch dot grass. So Victoria, you had a delightful review this week of a device called the B. Please tell us about the B. Okay, so this review, which is B by V. B by V.

We do not like those two letters together without the buy, though. Okay. Anyway. Sorry. I think I killed Ed. Yeah, you did kill it. She'll take a lot more to kill this.

Okay, so you just like toppled Ed for a second. Yeah, we are. So, you know, B is kind of the latest. in the AI gadgets that claim to be your memory. You know, you wear it. It records everything you say. And when I say, it records everything you say, it records everything you say. Okay.

So it records everything you say, listens to all of your conversations. It doesn't record the audio, but it then processes everything into a transcript. So you have a transcript of your life. And then from that transcript, you can use a chatbot to search the history of your life. Or you can get these daily summaries that, or just be like, oh, this is what you did today. These are the conversations you've had. This is the places that you went to.

And then it will also suggest to-dos based on your conversation. Right. So I wore it for about a month. And it wrote some really great fan fiction about my life. And it was also like... Can you read us some? I actually have one of my favorites, which was when she was listening to TV Off by Kendrick Lamar. Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Here's one of the moments. Victoria instructed mustard to turn off the TV. reminding them both to avoid getting sick again and mentioning leftover shocketry. Yes. This fucking rules. It's because, you know, like, obviously about the time when I started testing this,

the Super Bowl halftime show was just like in everyone's mind and I was like blasting TV off everywhere because I'm like, yes, and I said, mustard! So that was just going in my house like a lot. And so the bee is picking this up and mistaking it as like things that I'm saying. Yes. It would be like someone,

is someone is very sure of themselves because I'm watching TikToks and they're bragging about themselves. It also like, so there's this bit called fact that I call fact tinder. They call it fact review. So in the app, based on your conversations, you'll get this window and there's just like facts about you and you swipe yes. If it's true, no, if it's not true. Yeah, it's absolutely nice. So one of my fact tinders was like Victoria knows someone named Kendra Montesia who enjoys mustard and turning TVs off. Which is just like, you know, okay.

You know, you know. And in my review, I made this little carousel of fact tinders that I was given that you can just go through and try and guess which one of these are true. There was one that was just like Victoria has dietary specific, like specific dietary needs and she can't eat lollipops. And I'm like, I don't even know how I made that out. For your information, I don't recall talking about lollipops. I don't recall eating a lollipop. I don't know where you would get this information from. That's nuts.

What was the LLM behind B again? Was it their own? It's a mix of available LLMs such as I think Anthropics and Open AIs as well as their own. So they're not giving the actual mix. What was the point? Hang on. Alex, Alex, I can tell you the point. I want one of these things.

things for me because I'm the sort of person that talks a lot and then does nothing at the end of the day with it because and then I want it to be like here's all your to-does based on all the crap you said today. So so so there is a glimmer of a good idea. Yes. Because I have ADHD. There you go. I consist I think everyone consistently has conversations with people in their lives and they'll be like yes, we should follow up on that. Exactly. Don't follow it up on that. Yes. You didn't write it down or you didn't put it in there. So the idea that gleaning from your conversations that it would do that, it's not a bad idea. There are a lot of people with memory problems who might like that.

Unfortunately, you also have to have a pretty good sense of self in order to fact-check this AI because otherwise you are going to be gaslit constantly. So the way I wrote this review is like I kind of wanted to take people into what it's like to actually use it, how it changes your behaviors and all of that. So I included my day one. I commuted on day one into the office. I went and I took a briefing for BoldHue, which is a foundation printer.

Very cool device. I saw that story by you too. Thank you. I'll link to it in the notes. But so like I found that, I took that briefing and I went to the office that day. I had dinner with a friend and I went home. So a day where I had a lot of conversations.

Yeah. And of the five to-dos that it generated that day, one of them was like follow up on thoughts that were shared but not like deeply dove into I'm like what the fuck is that being thank you yeah that's great sure thoughts that were shared let me just check up on my thinking that we didn't die I don't fuck what does that mean the second was like urgently check on your patient in Louisiana as they are in danger of self-harming or harming someone else and I'm like what the where did that come from wow where did that actually come from And the other one was check your car because it's making rumbly noises.

So let me tell you, the car that it told me to check was probably the New York, the NJ Transit bus. Because that was a bumpy ride coming in. The Louisiana patient, I'm guessing, was someone on my commute talking about something or watching something? And this thing is just on you the whole time. Just listening to everyone. And what's the battery life like? And it depends on how often you mute it. And the longer I wore it, the more I muted it

because it's starting to feel like surveillance state. Yeah, sure. But, you know, anywhere between three or four days and a week, depending on how often you're muting. On the charge? On a charge. So it's the actual plan of the B to just gather so much random conversations that it can, like, better train its LLM.

Even then would that work? Because it doesn't seem to know shit from fuck. It doesn't even do voice detection. Because they'll have a bunch of people that they don't behave very well. It does do your voice. When you set it up, you do train it on your voice. Okay. And it did the poor job of that.

Yes. Because it often thought my husband was me. Or random people. My husband has a much deeper voice than I do. So, you know, it. I love the future. I, you can label speakers and whatnot. Yeah, sure.

Doesn't that defeat the point? Right. Too much work at the end of the day. It also doesn't always work. I tried labeling speakers and it wouldn't save. And then the one time it labeled my friend, all women from this, therefore. who I talked to were this friend. So it's like, this friend did this for you, did this friend.

Now that's the tech product. No, they didn't do that. They didn't do that whatsoever. I have a question. So when you took your briefing, did you have a conundrum of whether you wanted to mute it? Did you ask, tell people who are using it? It's a briefing. Yes.

Generally, those are going to be recorded. I was actually recording on my phone. Right. I totally forgot that I was wearing that thing. Okay. So, you know, like I was. fully expecting to just use my phone recording of it. And then I was like, oh, it has processed my conversation.

And to be fair, the summary I got of that meeting was actually quite good. It did. From B. Yeah. It was quite good. It was similar to what Otter does. It was summarizing the key takeaways from this very structured conversation. It also memorialized forever so that I know this is true in multiple different outlets that

Sir John, fiancée's makeup artist, said that I have great skin. That's worth everything. You do have great skin. Let's memorialize it here again. I am not wearing foundation. That's a better offline fact. Yes. I have great skin and I have spent so much money ensuring that I have great skin with many Korean

skincare products. Oh, we will talk about this. But just, you know, so like, oh, this is memorialized. I love this. But the thing is so it got all the facts about the thing, right? Including pricing. All of that was correct. Launch date, got that correct.

got the name of the product completely wrong. Was it a uniquely spelled? It was called formula. It was called formula. It's bold hue. Not remotely the same. This just sounds like it's just generic. Because Otta does this, I'm guessing they use similar models.

I'm guessing it's just the same models that everyone else uses to take voice. Like rev.com does this as well. So like the most impressive thing is the thing that large language models do already. I have to wonder if its inability to tell. certain people apart is kind of almost going back to like one of the core problems of AI type stuff like when the connect could not see black people. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah. I have to wonder if they've done much training on voices that are not from white woman nor men. So they do offer 40 languages. Well, so does otter in these other things. None of these

transcription services work very well. I know that. I'm just telling you. I'm just telling you. Like, slow your role. Our audience doesn't know this. They're not journalists like us. Let me talk. They don't have to use the garbage. I am just saying they offer 40 languages. I did not test whether the other 40 languages were good. Let's test some languages now.

I cannot speak anything other than English. We've got about four languages between us. We do have about four languages. Two people in this room have four languages. The non-white people in this room have about four languages between us. But the thing I'm getting at is like 40 languages does not cover the race problem. So I think what you're getting at Ed is that technology frequently does this because if the info is trained on it doesn't train on a wide enough set of people to cover the broad spectrum of people in our world. I will say that like these.

Also talking speed. Exactly. Talking speed, talking pitch, talking like cadence and patterns. I do think though that what both Alex and V were getting at or two is that this particular product is so far behind in its like algorithms and the machine learning side of things. because Otter, Rev, even Google Recorder or Apple Memo's Voice Memoes can better identify voices and tell them apart and then attribute them very accurately. They also struggle, but they're so much better. So like here's the other thing. This thing, because it's listening to things that all the time, also struggles to tell between broadcasts and live conversations.

Oh, yeah. So, you know, I'm watching an episode of Abbott Elementary and, like, I just have to like emphasize and underscore that it takes up about 10% of your actions. active brain at all times to be like, should I be muting myself right now? Like, you know, you do that, like, whatever you do in a Zoom call currently, imagine doing that 24-7. That's, it's a lot of your brain that gets devoted to that. Does it process when you go to the bathroom?

Ew. Yeah. Wow. I can tell you didn't read my review because that is in my review. I actually didn't remember whether it did. There was a lactate related thing. There's so, okay, so anyway, we're going to address all these points. We're going to address all these points.

I need to know if that was lacked aid or lactate. Lacta aid for dairy purposes. Because I heard the other one. Okay, we're going to start with the broadcast thing. I was watching an episode of Abbott Elementary and the suggested to do it gave me was monitor union strikes because students may have a hard time coming to your class

due to septa strikes. I am not a public school teacher in Philadelphia. One, two, it can also read your emails if you give it access. It told me to basically take this unique ID identifier and check this Park Mobile claim settlement and file by March 5th. I checked four, all four of my inboxes.

I cannot find this email. I have no idea why they told me to do this. So cool. I, you know, one morning after a particularly fibrous dinner, I went to the bathroom and I committed crimes. Okay, committed crimes. I was wearing this stupid thing. Not stupid, but, you know, I feel I was wearing this device that I was testing.

I turn around and I go, oh, damn, that was a shit. And then a second later, a second later I went, oh, shit, this thing is listening to me. And then I muted it far too late. I look at the summary it gives me and it goes, Victoria humorously vocalized her bowel movements. And I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. Headshot. And then I had a one-on-one with my editor. And the summary, because it was within an hour of this happening,

the summary that it transcribed was Todd, Victoria's editor, humorously brought up that he saw on a shared platform that they had, a fact that she had vocalized her bowel movements. They laughed about it, and it was funny. And I was like, do you think that I would commit such an HR violation as to tell my freaking editor that I had a particularly impressive dump that morning.

No. I would not, I would not tell anybody this. I would take this to my grave unless it was to demonstrate the fallibility of AI because this is a human good. A human good for me to be humiliated.

So I shared this. And my conclusion is that death, sex, and bowel movements are things that AI should butt the fuck out of. Yeah. Because I got some real interesting notifications from this, and I was like, I didn't need you to know that. I didn't need to be humiliated by that, but the suggested to do was to start carrying lactate.

From the poop? Because I'm lactose intolerant, and I had a conversation about how I was lactose intolerant. And it said, start carrying lactate again because lactose intolerant symptoms are coming back. And I was like, this is fucking rude. I don't. I'm so sorry. helpful, helpful. Two days later it's like, do not have mustard, that would not be good for your bowels.

And don't turn the TV off. Yeah. But so I do want to say that it is, it does learn broadly things about you that are accurate. So I, by the end of my month testing this, I had fallen down into several existential crises. But there is a chat bot that you can talk to. And so I asked it things like, am I a good person? Am I a bad person? What type of person am I?

One who needs lactate. Fuck off. And takes big days. There you go. Anyway. Huber is Victoria. Yeah. And I was like, what is my communication style?

How would you describe the themes of my past month? Ooh, if you're an ENFP or an INT. It's about a scientific. What's my relationship like with my spouse? Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't ask Kevin Bruce. The funny thing is I was very touched because it was like you are definitively a good person.

Here is like six reasons why with transcript things like it's like you constantly show up for your friends You stand up for right or wrong you do this this this and this and I was like oh my god Wow this is the validation we were talking about so lovely And it's just like you prefer direct and honest communication you don't play games and I was like yes because I am an aries mercury I'm aries I'm aries son Leo moon aries no airy sun Leo rising Leo, no, Aries Sun, Leo rising, Aries Moon and Ares Mercury, and it's basically like, astrology and AI both agree that I don't fucking rot. I don't fuck around. Basically, I'm very direct.

What you see is what you get. Super honest. I was like, oh, thank you. That's so nice. And they're like, you advocate for your colleagues. Oh, that's so, it's true. I am a good friend. But what use is this information?

Self-elating. It's six feet under. I need an AI with transcript. to have definitive objective proof that I'm a good person. How nuanced are these going to... You don't like when a computer says you're pretty? I don't... I don't love it.

I don't care. I love it. The computer was like, you are such a good writer. And I was like, thank you so much. We're getting into Severance zone, aren't we like... Yeah, it was... Oh, you should have seen the to-does it gave after I watched an episode of Severance. It made no sense.

Watch a more interesting episode. Like... The one... I watched four. Okay, no. I've loved this season, but the one where she goes out to the cold... I've watched four. episodes. That was not the episode that I watched.

No, I've loved this season. Okay, because the pets will come for me in the email. The episode that I was getting, the episode that I was getting Tadu's from was from the one where it's Gemma. It was all about Gemma? It was all about what you. That was a beautiful one. That was a beautiful episode. But when I looked at the D-DU's, like, I was like, this is. Jesus Christ.

This is, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Go to the dentist, donate blood. Yeah. It was just like, not like that. It was just kind of closer to the discovery. You can't choose the room you like. Or it's like follow up on thoughts that were shared. Follow up on Cold Harbor.

And I was like, huh. This is now a movie pod. Yeah. Honestly. I have some other practical question. So it's $50 with no subscription, yes? Yes. How the fuck does this make sense?

Numeric. Like, so they claimed in the, in the review you said they're going to do it on device, which is a thing that everyone says, and I've never seen one of these companies actually execute. So 50 bucks and they're, so it's, she's showing up my backtop. Victoria Valley of honesty and does not like dishonest behavior. I agree with that from one of your Victoria. It says that's one of your hobbies.

I know. Hell yeah. Wait a minute. Oh, look at this. Victoria. Your hobbies are being a good person. Wait, hang on. Hang on.

Show me. It says Victoria believes in leading with love and kindness and calmness and interactions with family. And you have, it's tagged at the bottom as hobbies. As hobbies. That's so good. But yeah.

Victoria understands Korean to some I don't have so. Jesus Christ. Victoria has a partner named very accurate. Also a hobby. Also a hobby. This is labeled as health.

Victoria has lost both of her parents. Jesus. Yes, this is true. Victoria values family relationships and wishes to maintain them. Also true. I would love it if it said otherwise it's like Victoria's listening.

This is politics, which is also true. Victoria has been involved in discussions about family inheritance and estates. The tagged as politics. That is true. Very good. Victoria has an interest in visiting family in Korea. True.

Hobbies. Victoria has collaborated on a gadget-related podcast. Wow. This is true. Wait, so it's very gamified almost. It's also very obvious. Yeah. Like these are things.

I have to wonder. See, the problem is I would love this company to burn. I think the idea of this concept is horrifying. I think it's upsetting that it exists. However, I would also love. love to see a 10 people's worth of data on this, just to see if they tell everyone very similar things. Because how the fuck do you define, like, is it willing to be like, you sound like a dickhead? You do not care about your family. I would love to know that. I was going to say, I think the

flip side of it validating you is will it pick up on behaviors that are negative in people that have like these traits. Like we, you know, in social media and in popular culture now, we're calling everyone narcissists, right? If you watch any episode of love is blind, it's like, that's a narcissist and that's a manipulator. It had opinions based on a, uh, love. Love is blind as well. Oh, I love that. One of my fat cinders in the review is saying that Victoria had an incident where Madison left the room. Yes, Madison.

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That's where my point is, is right now the people who are using it and testing it are getting these positive responses and feedback. I'm curious to see what it would do to any number of CEOs or billionaires that might be told other things. to me bitch to friends about things and has recorded those things those were not included in the review

because I would I would get cancelled for some of things I said. It did also listen to me talk for about an hour and a half about Blake Lifely and Justin Baldoni. My opinions on that. Your friends, I assume

it thought. Yeah it said Victoria's team balcony in a Victoria's team balcony in a celebrity gossip context and I was like it also gave me facts such as

Victoria has a living room and a kitchen Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm glad you have both of those, yeah. One of my favorite things that it did was it summarized a conversation between, so what happened was is that we were having some late night cookies, Oreos, and I dropped one into

the cat's empty food bowl. And I went three second rule and my husband goes, That's disgusting. And I say, in an apocalypse situation, you would eat that Oreo. And he went, I have a heat gun. I would just disinfect it. It took this conversation and went,

Victoria and Gave have disagreements about how to handle smelly things in an apocalypse. That was a disagreement. It was a disagreement. I'm just like, what the, what is the point of any of it? Who is looking at this and going like, ah, finally? I'd forgotten I had the smelly Oreo No, actually the Oreo was left out. How would you possibly not?

It feels like the bee was this like little toddler robot in your house looking at you going through your life and then taking notes, right? And we don't know what the notes are for, but it's taking notes, right? It just sounds like... It gives you an update on your day. It sounds like every guy, a like 25-year-old woman has dated in New York who's just like on his phone just going, yeah, yeah, yeah, he said something about smelly Oreo some shit.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. I will say. Yeah, I think you had an argument? Every once in a while, you do get a really good to do, though. Like, it was like follow up with your video team about making a social for the Volta. That was something I actually did. Call the plumber, because, which I did, fix the HOA violation that you left festering for eight months. Which I did.

So, you know, like, some of them are good. And how frequently are they good? Like, one out of every. I would say it depends on what you use it for. So if you're using it primarily for work conversations, which is appropriate. So you mute it when it's not? When you mute it and you only use it for work conversations, your batting average is quite high for takeaways that are good.

Like 90%? No, like 60. Oh, 90. 90, Shirlin. I'm not saying 60 is pretty good. This is the worst to ever be. And it depends on how many people are in the conversation with you. So it listened to a staff meeting. And the takeaways were not so.

particularly good for me, but they would have been great for someone in the particular thing. But then, you know, if you're talking with friends, like, it's difficult because you're talking with friends, you have to go like, hey, so just so you know, I have this thing on me and it's listening, and it's going to have some AI insights. And some of your friends, some of my friends are techies, so they're like, oh man, what LLM does it use? So like, they don't mind. My bestie is just like, another one of your fucking devices, sure, go ahead, whatever. My friends are so tired of my chair too. Yeah, one of your doodad go off.

My husband, however, was very much like, it is not useful enough to invade my privacy. That's a great review. It's the people around you. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask is, like, is $50 worth? Like, $50 to invade your privacy forever to give all of your, not just like your bowel movements. Yeah.

Everything to a company you don't know worth it. I mean, they, they, okay, I have to come on here. and say I did ask about the privacy. It's not like I didn't ask about it. Yeah, I'm going to ask that to you. They are working on a local phone-only model. Yeah, yeah, working on that. I'm just saying.

No, no, I'm not criticizing you. I know. I know. I know. I know. I'm just saying. The other thing is that everything is encrypted in transit and at rest. Sure.

Good. They have a third party auditing their privacy protocols every so often. and then no audio is stored. It's just processed and then you get transcripts, which, you know, sometimes I was like, I would actually like audio proof that my cousin made me cry so that I could shove it in their face in the future,

but it's still doing a transcript, so... The transcript is not always correct. It's not always correct. What's crazy is this company raised $7 million a year ago? I can't believe that. And it took them this long to come up with a product that kind of works. That money could be, like, saving so many,

I'm sorry, I'm so angry. Burn it. You feel warm at least. It's funny. I think it's, you know, no, I will say, I think $7 million, they produced hardware. Yes. That's a thing they did for $7 million. I mean, that's almost impressive.

That's almost impressive. But that's kind of the review of AI, though. Yeah, but no, I think this is, almost impressive. This seems the most, no, no disrespect. A pointless, deeply flawed product, only two steps above the rabbit. This feels like some shit I hear about it. Calling it above the rabbit is very interesting. This is like a 20-15 last product.

This is some Indiegogo fraud. Yes, exactly. I gave him five because it worked better than Humane what it said it was going to do. Okay, that's fair. It's also 50 bucks. Yeah, it's also. Yeah, that.

And also, Humane made way greater claims and promises. Rabbit also made very great claims. I want to point out that, like, I find it funny that, like, there's a lot of concerns of invasions of privacy, and I get that for people around me, there is an. invasion of privacy. I was intrigued by the $50 B because like Victoria, sometimes I do want like the audio recording of

things happening in my life. There is, as receipts. Like I said, there's a glimmer of a good idea. Hold on. What are you have in your pocket? What are two on the, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, I have nothing but good luck and stars in my eyes. Yeah, we, we all have phones. It's, it is. It is, yeah,

something that is always recording. Alex, you, you don't think like, maybe myself and Victoria, I, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll speak for myself, do, which is that I feel as if everywhere I go, every day I am more at risk of like needing to back up my experience to defend myself. And that's why that sort of device always felt appealing to me and maybe. So like I think in an enterprise sense, it does make sense.

If you're a lecturer, if you're a lawyer, if you're, you know, and you need someone. No lawyer in their right in mind. I'm not, I'm okay, not a lawyer in their right mind. A lawyer in their bad mind. Yeah. In their wrong mind. But just like just someone who takes a lot of meetings and needs a lot of notes from those meanings. Like, there is, there is, like, a use case there.

But the problem is with those, I understand what you're getting at is, like, doctors and lawyers, here's the thing. HIPAA. They need, well, HIPAA. It needs to work. They need accuracy. If you get a nuanced thing wrong in the law, that tends to be what lawyers love. That's the problem. So, that's why I'm saying there's, like, a glimmer of an idea there.

Like, I think there's the glimmer of the idea. That's generative AI writ large. It's just fucking, there's a glimmer of an idea. It's the suggestion of a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's just, the concepts of a plan. Yeah, exactly. If you spend a month constantly reviewing your own life and fact-checking what things happen.

Yeah, how did that leave you feeling? Not well. Yeah, you feel insane. I felt insane a little bit because I was constantly fact-checking and I was constantly like when I actually thought like it was reading my text messages for a while. Oh, God. Because I was like, these are private conversations I had in text messages on encrypted platforms. How is it even knowing these to just. Just typeing out loud.

No, no. I don't. Boy's dictation. This did really affect my behavior over a month because I realize that like an offhand comment, it can just glean so much from that. That was just frightening to me because I would say like a thing in passing to my husband and be like, oh, here's an update on that. And it would just, and I was like, oh, shit. And so I've actually been very quiet the last month. Like, I don't speak anymore to myself.

After the poop gate. After the poop gate and bathroom. crimes. I was like, I do not say things anything to me. I meant to ask if in the encryption process were that the sounds of plops get encrypted too, but I guess, you know, I would love an audio file of that for myself. That's horrifying. I mean, I'm strange. I think that there is a larger thing here, though, that this is a classic tech guy idea. It's like, what is an idea I'd have? Oh, I want to memorize everything that's happening around me and be able to analyze it and then do these insights. It's actually a very cruel way to live because we say things

offhanded. Forgetting is like very important part of life. But being fallible, our existence is not something that is written down in its entirety

and indeed I don't know how useful it is having everything written down. It's not at all. A fun thing that I did. Unless you're like a researcher 100 years from now is absolutely going to love

to know how V responded to her bowel. Oh my God, they're going after. Like the anthropologist 200 years from now. It's going to be like Anelister.

They were just like, thank you for giving me all of this. They've listened to this and they're like, we need to dig up Victoria's file now. And that's the only reason. Like, if you're an archivist, I'm so sorry. Listen, okay? No, I didn't beat it. Anyway. Anyway, I would just like to note that I am avid diarist and a journal, like a journaler.

I would have gone with another way of saying that person. I've read diarrhea. Oh, fuck you guys. Anyway, I write in a diary state. I journal daily. I journal. I also journal regularly. I journal regularly. So this past month I have journaled every single day. And the things that I write down and that I remember as memorable are not always the same thing that this thing picked up. Because a lot of my thoughts and things that are important to me and memories that are like meaningful to me are completely silent. So my philosophical question is if it doesn't happen out loud, if you have a society where we're all wearing these devices. If you say nothing out loud, does it count as your memory?

Right. And this device would say no, because you can't know that from you. It's also a very crude analysis of memory itself. Human memory is insane. Yeah, it is. Like, it's, the things we remember are done in chunks, the experience of being alive, at least for me, is it's not like my thoughts like, and now I'm on a podcast, and now I'll say the thing. It's like, I do.

There are apparently people who do. I actually do. Those people are, no. Wait, Shirlene, you think like this? What's it like to be normal? I'd like to have an internal model. I have one of those. I don't have an internal model.

It's more adjacent to Cornholio for me. Cornholiotic. I actually, you mentioned something earlier, though, Sheldon, I wanted to go back to, which is you said this thing about feeling the need to document things around you. Can you go into, like, what is the thing pushing you to do that? It's, because I feel as if I, maybe am part of my life, I've talked to both of you about this before, where I encounter things, and then I feel as if I get questioned about them afterwards and people don't believe me.

Right. So like journalism brain. It's journalism brain. It's microaggressions being thrown your way daily. It's being a lady. It's being a woman. It's like the things that we have to think about all the time. So like I feel as if if I had a wearable microphone or camera on me all the time,

this is why I reviewed the humane with great enthusiasm at first. It's I feel as if one of those people who cat calls me across the street, I had like documented evidence of that and I could bring it up like how many times it happens a week. I could have like valuable knowledge on my hands to be like, When people question if it really happens that much, I can be like, look at all these instances. So for that reason, I have a lot of things that document parts of my life. To your point, Alex, I have phones that record a lot of my conversations when I feel they're important. Right.

There's my security camera outside. I'm like, whatever it captures, promotion. I have it triggered on a motion sensor and it records everything. And I'm like, I don't pay now for the backup that allows me to go back in time and look at them all the day. But like, if I did, I would sit there and look all the time. I think that experience is not every woman or every person who feels that way, but I don't know. Something in my upbringing or my culture has let me to feel like that.

There's a fine line because I do think that when you do that, when you are constantly reviewing the documents of your life, it can be not so great for your mental health. Oh, absolutely. It's not. My conclusion is that part of being a human is understanding when you need to forget things. and move on. And instead you're inviting...

I don't trust an AI to do that for me. A really poorly implemented, honestly, because of how badly it failed you, you're having a poorly implemented AI. Intending to profit off you in ways we still don't know, because $50 to have that many AI like recalls... Yeah, they're not making money. They're burning cash.

So where are they making their money? I think there is plans down the line to have some sort, of subscription. Yeah, of course. Right now there isn't one. That is the way of every single one of these products. We see this again and again and again. There's something that really moves Silicon Valley and they get really, really excited.

In this case, it's AI. And they're like, how can we commodify this? How can we make money off of this? How can I go and make money off this? Shit, I think that all the time. I'm unemployed right now. I'm always thinking, how can I do that? I'm not.

Yeah, awesome. But it's this constant thing. And then they released this product that is pretty terrible. You gave it a five. It is clearly not finished. And it is for such a small group of the population. How on earth do they expect anyone in the normal world who's just out there existing, who goes to Walmart all the time and doesn't listen to a podcast all the time,

be like, yeah, I want to take this little $50 thing that's going to charge me money monthly and wear this on my, and record everything I do. No normal person. No one would. No one would. No normal person. It is such brainworms. It's insane.

But you have that a lot in like Silicon Valley. They only think about the positive of it. And like, no, they don't, all they're thinking about, they're not thinking about the positive of it. Let's be really clear. They're not thinking about the positive of it. They're thinking about how can I make money off this?

Growth. How can I grow? Yeah. That is, it is growth at all cost thing. That is, and it's disruptive. And it's ruining this world.

But I mean, when they market it, they tell you all the good things it can do, but they never like really get into the fact that like, this thing listened to me cry, like pretty heavily after I got into a fight. I'm sorry. And then I had to review the transcript. And then look at it.

And then just like have it analyze how I was feeling because it was like the day was a sad one for my story It's like when Amazon did tone. As someone who's recorded one of her own firings before, you don't want to listen to that stuff. Oh, I've recorded a breakup before. That was great. You don't, you don't like don't

I did it for legal reasons. That's unhinged girl. You know me. I am unhinged. Oh my God. I want to like. You're lucky I haven't recorded all our conversations, honey. No, no, here's it. I will clarify that I record, I don't go on review every day. I think that that's really detrimental to your mental health. I do it for the like the receipts.

And in that breakup example, I don't think I actually recorded it. I wrote down every single word. And that's different. Just to be clear. Yes, yes. It's just... I think what I'm really frustrated by is this is another example of a totally unfinished product. We're seeing this again and again.

We saw it with Apple this last week. Apple intelligence. When you've got Gruber and German and a lot of these other people coming out there saying, hey, something's wrong with this. It's not done. It's not done. It's not done. But, exactly. you've lost Gruber. That means

you've failed. And we're seeing that, like, if Apple is out there rushing a product when they know it's not ready, when they don't have all of the stuff, they don't have the use cases. It's like what we saw with VR. I spent years covering VR waiting for that big moment. And everybody said it's just

around the corner. Is it here yet? No. Okay, I just wanted to chat. What did you ask me? Is it because V is in her name? It's because she does a lot of VR coverage. It's Victoria reality. Thank you. Victoria. Exactly. We wear a lot of different glasses. A lot of smart glasses,

Witcher. And also, the company that made this, by the way, the founding team came from Twitter. Oh, sorry. They helped ship Twitter spaces. You know that beloved product. And some sort of video chat app called Squad. Okay.

Squad, the anti-brose startup is creating a safe space for teenage girls online. And wait a second. Let's see who founded this. Esther Corford. I think she's the woman. helped Elon Musk anyway point is

these fucking people don't care at all they're not seeing there being like how would this be helpful because the most helpful thing would make sure it was really focused that it was able to discern a professional but they probably can't do it

because it isn't possible it's just if people cared about people people with money cared about other people we would be spending this money on cancer research where the NIH grants are being pulled and stalled right now or they would focus it on improving the health care system of this country,

but people do not care. They care about taking their money and growing it for more money for themselves. That's just like, which I hate, but you don't expect people to suddenly become good people overnight, especially if they have money. But there is just like one thing where it's like you have to at the very least create a good product experience for people. And the thing that frustrates me the most when I review products is that I feel like

there's just this polyanish, like, like view of what life is from these people in Silicon Valley. Right. Whereas just like, I, I, I have had a life of great suffering. Um, and they think it's like, you know, I've been, I've been through a lot of shit. Like both my parents died. My dog died. My entire immediate family died in the last five years.

Oh my God. I'm so sorry. It's fine. It's not, but it's fine. I have like a lot of, you know, traumatic stuff that has happened. And it's kind of changed my perspective of these kinds of devices. because life is not pretty. There are moments where it's very hard

and where these sorts of to-dos, I can imagine a time where like when I was in the height of my grief where I would have loved a thing to remind me to do stuff to listen to the conversations that I was not processing to give me those to-dos. There are moments and I think there is a desire for something like that. That AI could ostensibly at some point when it actually works, a lot of like asterisks here.

that could help people. And I think if people want to pursue that, that's great. But you can't do it without acknowledging the fact that not every moment in your life is going to be pleasant. They're going to be embarrassing. There's going to be heartbreak. There's going to be these negative experiences that you don't necessarily want summarized to you in a way that you're going to have to review and feel gas. Did your ex gaslight you? Guess what?

The AI is going to gaslight you about how that horrible douche gase. asslet you. And like that kind of thing is just not necessarily great. And you get it across so many different categories. Put on my business person hat. It's not just bad. She's putting it on. I know.

She is literally. It's a bad hat. It's a big top hat. It's a little top hat. Let me get my monocle out. It's not just it's bad for people. It's a bad product. Yeah.

Like let's be clear. A lot of these products we've seen again and again trying to do AI, trying to make it. Google's done some decent work in this space with a decent. But most of these products continue to be bad. They continue to be searching first. I'm sorry, I've got a pushback on that. Like what with Google? I'm sorry.

Notebook L.M. alone is impressive. There was that thing where you could like, you could like erase a person out of a picture. Oh, magic eraser. Yeah. That's not generative AI though. Yeah, it is. It's generating. Is that generative?

It's generating that sky. It's not in the era of, so Google's done that before the right. eyes of open-air. What else did it do? This is, by the way, this is also the industry that the entire economy is built on top of, just to be clear.

And these are some of the most well-credentialed tech people, and we're all just going, fuck, why is this? Hang on, pause, pause. I want to pivot to all of that by saying there is a good product that's built to help people feel better. You're pointing at me.

For AI? No, not AI. That's the thing. No, I want to talk about There's so much of these There's like a Mexican standoff of pointing. You were pointing at each other so hard. We really were the spider-man.

Yeah, but they're not similar. I don't know. That's Sherlin make a point. Anyway. Yeah. Wait, who's going? Shirling. I was going to go. I have been using this app. I encountered it through a coworker who wrote about it for us.

It's called Finch. It's an app that's like a self-care app. Right. The one with the little animal. The birdie. Yeah. So by taking care of yourself, you're taking care of this pet. You're helping it grow. And what it is is these the most gentle suggestions of to-does in a day,

Whether it is as simple as get out of bed, brush your teeth, drink water, you complete them, you get points, you grow your pet, whatever. It is a gentle reminder of things you want to do throughout the day and you can reward yourself. And it is developed by, and here's the crucial difference, two independent developers that were college buddies that were just trying to help motivate each other. And I think that is an example I can point to of tech being able to help people because I also read the subreddit. I mean, that is a great example. and a lot of different things there. It's two people. It's not seeking a huge valuation.

And it's not, it doesn't sound like it's using a lot of generative AI. It has a point. It is a very focused product with a core mission in mind of helping people. And that is something I can stand by. Yeah. But I think most of these products we're seeing, particularly in the AI market. Especially from the big companies and the VCs. They are, everybody is out just doing this money grab.

Everybody's just saying, how do I grab this space? Because the motivation is different. Well, hold on, hold on. Exactly. Of course they're asking. Of course they're asking that. And what are they all doing? Why are they all doing this?

They're all trying to chase the iPhone. They're all trying to chase something that happened in 2007. Sure. And let's point out, in 2007, the iPhone was a way more, even in its shittiest state, 2007, was a way more well-thought-out, well-produced product than any of the product. And it was so different. And it also fixed really big of it. Exactly. I got the original iPhone.

Yeah. It was a little nerd. I didn't have friends. but I did have money saved up from writing. And I bought it. And I remember showing people visual voicemail and people going, holy shit, that's amazing because voicemail at the time

was this defunct product where you had to like dial in and hit a button. I do miss recording my voicemail message though. I do. It's cute as hell. People can barely understand me half the fucking time. So unless I'm on this show, I hope. But like you could send text messages and it didn't involve you doing like the weird hitting the numbers thing.

The T9. I love the T9. Sorry, okay. It's just intention, right? Yeah. The intentionality. But also real people problems experienced by humans. Exactly.

Exactly. Right now all we are doing is we are creating things and everybody's sitting around saying, wow, I wish that, you know a universal problem? Everybody wants to chronicle every moment of their life. Yeah. Shirlene does. I sure do. You actually don't.

Yeah. You actually don't. You want to chronicle important moments at some point. You don't want to chronicle every moment. No. And also, no offense. Shirleyness, one person? Yeah, I am the most important, but I am one person.

You are one person. You are, like, that is a very small group of people, and they're like, everybody wants to do this. I think there was a much high-level problem, though, which is they are not being like, well, you know what people have problems with remembering things. They're like, yeah, we can't fucking fix that. We actually can't fix that. Like, we can't fix that. Or people have problems with communication.

Yeah, well, we really also can't fix that. What can we do? Record everything and hope something fucking comes out? I don't know. These worms with their money, give it to me. I feel like they took the nugget of a good idea, which is you've been saying the glimmer of a good idea, and then stuffed, they needed money to make the good idea work,

and the only way to get that money is to say AI is the way. I agree. I think there's also another step, which is they actually can't do the good idea. I don't think they're capable of doing it, because the good idea would be like, hey, listen to what's going on and just tell me what things you think I might forget. It can't do that because the only thing they can do is have a big sludge of information, and chuck it at a large language model

and hope something comes out other than like, I don't want to watch the Garbo movie, which is a quote from your article. Yes, the Garbo movie was it ends with us from my very 90-minute long slant of how I don't want to watch that. My cat, Babu, I talk to him like a person.

It's going to be like, you told Bobby? I also talked to my cat as a person and it said that I had a rough and tumble ride with them discussing childhood memories because it mentioned my cat, Petey. And I'm like, P.D.'s my cat. And I was talking to the cat, and I say, oh, who's a little baby? Innocent, Innocent, Inish, middle men,ish.

No, it just said that I have a dog named Ed. Oh, great. Nailed it. Yeah. No, with me, it'd be like how, saying to Ed has talked to Hal who he calls Mr. Beautiful. Yeah. And he really is. He acts like the most beautiful cat in the world.

He is. I would imagine your fact Tinder would say Ed knows someone named Mr. Beautiful and he is fluffy or something like that. Mr. Perfect. Mr. Beautiful and so on. It's just, and I think that's what it really is. We all are coming up with, like, distinct problems that can be solved, and this is not what large language models do, and it's very difficult to get them to do specific things, as proven by the fact that none of the products exist.

You can't solve being human. Yes. That's the thing, is like, we're all human. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Bodenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large. is the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Hey, everyone. It's Ryder Strong and Wilfredell from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets

Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered dancing with the stars. Traders. And we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. 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.

I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Yeah. Just because we? Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists to a finalist to a

a bunch of ha-hoo, ha, who. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune into Pod Meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to PodMeets Twirled on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 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're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm just a joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting, I was having panic attacks, I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present

is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is that procedure made me happy, because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course

and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I said this on a previous episode, you at the CS episode where I don't even think a robotics need to be humanoid in nature. Yes. It's not an efficient form of body. Exactly. Or a repetitive movement. That's it. And also they're not even making the you, like, so much of this, what frustrates me, even with the Kevin Roos thing, it's like no real problem solved. What could a conscious, an AGI could theoretically listen without recording and go, okay, I think you might need a reminder on this because I know you. These motherfuckers, actually that is the ultimate problem with this. It doesn't know you at all. It actually doesn't know you. That actually reminds me of when I was testing the meta ray band Live AI.

What? She's pulling a hair off. I was pulling a hair off. It just bug me. But I was testing that. And so it's Live AI. It's multimodal. It can look at what you're looking at.

And you can ask it questions and it'll see what you're seeing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are actual use cases for that. I've had many, many blind and low vision people reach out to me saying that that can change their lives. Which is cool. That is good. That is good. I love that. But, you know, the demos that they were, like, suggesting that I try or whatnot, I looked at my room.

I was like, tell me how I could make this room look less sad, basically. And I was like, oh, you could put art up. You could have a plant. You could have some rugs. And I was like, oh, Jesus fucking crazy. I know. What art? You could text any, like, random white guy, and they'd be like, oh, fucking no, plant.

Yeah, what type of art? What art should I use? But it was like, I had to ask. I had to ask, like, five. or six different questions just digging and digging and digging for this AI to suggest an artist. I asked my best friend. She said, you would love XYZ. I loved XYZ. I bought it immediately. It's not even contextually intelligent. It doesn't have, it doesn't look around and go, okay, looking at the format of this room. It's just frustrating because it is the, it's the info slot.

It is just collecting data and going, see, I actually, I was telling Sherlin about this earlier. I had a great moment where somebody was like, oh yeah, I use Claude AI as a therapist. I was like, you're unhinged, I love you. It is wrong. And so I was like, I'm going to talk to Claude A.I. And I was talking to it. And I was, you know, I was telling her about how things were going and everything. And I was like, I would really like it if you would recommend a book to me that that kind of speaks to the experiences I'm having right now. And immediately it was like, Goldfinch. And I was like, Goldfinch. I'm not familiar with this. I read that book. Why

that book? What is this book about? Okay. So this book is a Bill Dung's Roman from Donna Tart, author of secret history is about this little boy named Theo whose mom like dies in a terrorist attack at the Met and he like steals a piece of art and it just goes it goes through his life

of just being like well I have money like the resemblance is uncanny and I'm obsessed with a manic pixie dream girl in the thing and then I do a bunch of crime and at the end of the book he's just like well I've made life decisions average better offline listener No, anyway.

But it was like, I looked at that and I was like, well, this is a terrible fucking suggestion. And so I said, okay, suggest a movie to me. And it goes, Silver Linings Playbook. And I was like... Kids. And honestly, it was the best moment in my entire experience with this thing. Because before that, I'd been like, wow, this starts to get me. And I started almost like believe the AI understood me, even though I know for a fact it's stupid and it doesn't.

And then it said Goldfinch and Silver Linings Playbook. And I was like, oh, right. You're still wrong. You are a stupid robot. you are incapable of making the connections that humans make. And you are so far from it that you would recommend these to me. Because all you did was you saw on the internet, someone said goldfetch and self-actualization or so shit. And so clearly it's going to do your own.

It's when you vectorize every fucking fact and bit of data and you go just, this is just like human beings. You're just, you're a relational database with legs. Yeah. And I loved that moment because it immediately said, oh, yeah, this is a fucking robot. You're going close to something that's not real. Yeah, and immediately pulled me out of it. I was like, this is hysterical. I love this thing.

And I stopped using it for a minute because it, like, immediately. It broke you out of that illusion. And I loved that moment because it reminded me. These things suck. They're not human. Well, hang on, hang on. There was a point up until that that you were like this doesn't suck, though. Oh, no.

Yeah, I love it. Like I said, I love this thing because it is a big, it's like a horoscope. The validation machine, yeah. Yeah, it's a big validation machine. And just like a horoscope, it makes me feel pretty. And then it recommends Silver Linings Playbook or Goldfench, and I reminded that it's a horoscope. Yeah. This was, yeah, go on.

No, no, you were saying something. I was just going to say that this was the point in the conversation we were having just now, Alex, where you and I were both like, it is all still logic programming. It is all still input output. And as much and as sophisticated as the output seems, it is still input output, which is the basis of most computing. And it's like, until it's so-called things for itself that AGI question isn't there. Like the two years ago, Blake Lemoyne was like, it's not, it's not. it's never going to be because it takes the human brain to be capable of them. It also is not doing what, we don't even understand intelligence, but it is relational data, but it's very, very complex.

And I realize someone's going to listen to an international day. Shut the fuck, go outside. But it's, it's like, it's relational things. It's just looking and going, well, based on what you've said, I think this. And I don't, and as a thing with no experiences, I'm going to say, fucking sure. Like, it's a goldfinch, golfing. It's about growth. It's about life.

therefore assign it to Alex. It's just like emotions, like we don't even understand emotions. How is I supposed to understand it? It's not even smart enough to be like Howl's Moving Castle, which would cheer me up any time. Yeah, if it had said that, I would have been like, sick. Damn. I wouldn't be here right now because I'd still be just talking to Claude AI. We'd be getting married.

We'd have a date set. You would have proposed. I would intervene. She's been sending me screenshots of like the Claude and I'm just like, ha ha, I love that for you, girl. But it's also like, I'm monitoring because if you get too crazy and do it, I'm just going to be like, it's not real. Yeah, I know of people who use it, and I've read of cases on Reddit

where people use it as their mental health replacement. Like, the therapist's standard, and it's not. I think we are aware it's not. I worry for the people out there who are not, who are talking to Chad GPT, like it's their partner or a doctor system. I was just thinking this. Kevin Ruse. Okay, there you go.

That's the New York Times audience. This is why it actually connects to why I'm so pissed off at Kevin. He should know better. But a lot of people don't. The reason that I think a lot of right-wing, YouTubers have taken over like how men things because a lot of people are just looking for something to tell them what they want to hear. And this is

the biggest machine to do that in the world. And that validation you were talking about will validate them. And not challenging at all. It's not it might challenge you in the most gentle way. It never challenged me. It just told me I was great. Yeah. And then although it told me like areas I could slightly improve.

Oh like a performance review. I can get rid of my typos it told me and then I'll win a Pulitzer. Oh my God. I tell you that all the time. These motherfuckers love to tell people they're going to win Pulitzer. I know. It's really honest. I've never told me. I have tried, by the way, to use it like a mental health thing. Sure.

And I've had to just be like, be rudeer. Bushback. And it can barely do it. It cannot fucking keep up with my swag. I just demolish it. I just, I brutalize it. It's got nothing. There's like this Korean term called nunchi.

And it means it, it means like you should be able to read a room. Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence. It's like, I like, I'm not good at translating, but it's like eye power. or something like that. That's cool. And so, like, Korean parents will tell you, like, oh, what, don't you have nunchi?

It's because you should be able to look at a room and see what's going on, see what people are saying, read between the lines and make conclusions based on that. A, I can't do that. And that's exactly the problem, the B and exactly the problem, large language models.

It literally cannot read the room. All it can do is read this blob of text, this thing, and go, based on all of the training I've done from stealing the internet, I think that you will win a Pulitzer or you or cat. Syntaxically, your writing is similar to someone who has one a Pulitzer.

So it's comparing. And that's all that it is. It's just similar. Each year, the Pulitzer looks for like the most similar thing to the last year. Yeah. Because that's how human beings make sure. And it's only a chapter. And it's like that chapter when you're a Pulitzer.

But when you ask it, it's like, I never stole anything. Sheldonle, so you covered the, I actually have somehow missed this because I didn't want to know. The Alexa AI, what are they fucking? doing, the Alexa Plus. Man. One of these people. I read an interview with Neely Patel and I didn't get any information, so

if you could tell me. With Panos Panay, I'm assuming the new hardware chief at or senior vice president, I think, of devices and services at Amazon. Anyway, got chance to speak with him and also did an interview where I basically learned nothing because Panos is that kind of an enigma

by the way. He just talks. Oh yeah. He is charming as hell. I think an enigma's a very kind way of saying guy who doesn't say anything. despite his paycheck, but... Fair enough. That's my opinion. That's media training, and I have to admit that I tend to be suckered in by that. I'm the sort of person who will fall for that.

He's got a impeccable media. These people will never come on this show. They will know. So Alexa, and apologies to everyone that has an echo speaker, please go mute your speakers right now. But Alexa Floss is the redesign version of that assistant that Amazon's been promising forever, right? So it's been like, we're going to use LLMs,

we're going to use generative to make a more conversational language flow between you and the assistant, and you can pause yourself in between talking or speaking your comments, or, like, correct yourself mid-sentence or say a lot of things and not use contextual, like, follow-up questions and that sort of thing. And it should pause us. That is supposed to be, like, very handle complex tasks, right? You can stack tasks. You can also, what I thought? Ah, so, like, oh, um, no, look at my, um, ring camera feed and see if any, like, Huskies showed up,

or if anybody walked my dog today or something, that sort of thing. still simplistic in nature. Can it set multiple timers? You know what? Here's the thing. At that event, we had a hands-on quote, in air quotes, because we didn't actually get hands-on. We were just shown a lot of demos and it felt very rehearsed. I don't like that sort of event.

I don't call it hands-on because we didn't use it ourselves. So anyway. Eyes-on. Eyes-on. I was most intrigued, however, by Amazon's promise of how it's going to integrate with their party services, which is one of the things that these assistants are historically- kind of like the agenetic. Exactly.

Wait, wait, wait. We've heard that word now. I don't like agenetic. It's not. It's just the same thing. What does it do? Web forms. So let's set aside the

agentic question for a moment and talk about the third party integration. Yes, Panos. What does it do? But I hope I'm more I'm not to concrete terms. Yes. Sorry Panos.

There's three parts that Daniel Rosh, Bosch, their VP, I apologize for the last name thing, mentioned. was the APIs, right? It will work with people that it knows are its partners with Uber, Spotify, etc.

to API into its assistant so that you can say something like, oh, get me an Uber for whatever, or get me a, like, just be very natural with how you talk to your assistant. The second is agentic. So it's going to have, this was funny to me,

Alexa, a chatbot, talk to other chatbots on the internet, and they will just talk to each other on your behalf. Why would I want them to? I respect the shit out of you, but I must say, You just said the magic words of it will do. Ah, it's supposed to.

That's the thing. It claims, listen. I, Ed, you get out of my face because I write carefully. I know you do. There's a lot of hand movements going on. When I speak. I don't edit after. Anyway, it's supposed to.

I do sound like that. Thank you. It's supposed to. I don't do it's British. Now where was I? Yeah. It's supposed to have the assistants talk to each other. We've seen no demonstrations of this.

Well, I mean, we saw an on-stage demo. But again, here's my question. It can order an Uber. Yes. Or you can order food through Amazon Fresh, for example. Who wants to do this? Exactly. Yeah.

Who wants to do this? Because if I'm going to ask it to order an Uber, is it going to be like Siri where I asked it to call my mom and it called my aunt that I haven't talked to in 15 years? And they have totally different names. It's supposed to be better. Yeah, but how can you even call an Uber on it? Yeah, you're going to call an Uber.

You're supposed to say. Here's the demo they gave, and I'm sure, I think that was what Victoria was going to get through. The demo they gave were like, oh, what was that restaurant I liked? And then, like, Alexa Plus will be like, blah, blah, blah. Oh, make me a reservation. I had that second one. So instead of having to like, whatever, right. That's almost useful other than...

Yeah. A lot of assistants are supposed to get close to doing that too. Except for you're expected to put your trust. Yes. And it will get it correctly. Yes. And it is not capable of that. Sure.

And they're charging more for this, yes? Well, no. No, no, prime, prime subscribers get it for free. You have to pay if you're not a prime subscriber, which, like... Right. So I wasn't there, but I was listening through an audio fee. I was streaming the fee to my team. So basically, there was, like, one demo where it was like, oh, can you find me tickets to this Red Sox game for...

Oh, that's a little too pricey. Can you set an alert? Yeah. And basically, David was like, I already found tickets for that exact game for $56 online. You can do it faster by Googling. Yes. And then there's also just like, oh, you know, tell me what time so-and-so's flight is coming in. Right.

Okay. Send an Uber to pick that. This kind of feels like... And it's like that's not how Uber at JFK works. Right, right, exactly. It kind of feels like this was designed for mid-level executives who can't afford their own assistant. Yes, me. This sounds like it was designed to do this fucking event. I guess I saw.

Yeah. This just sounds like they designed enough things to demo an event. I agree with you. I'm not criticizing you just to be clear. No, I want to point out. No, I want to point out. that I was getting to a point, which is that none of this was interesting to me because it's been done slash been attempted to be done slash you can do it better yourself. Google's been doing this for five years. Exactly. It's big big gift. And it doesn't work. And it never worked. Yeah. Google was notably a big phony when it did it when it had the duplex? Was it? Was it AI that called? Yeah, the restaurant reservation. Duplex. Fake. Well, I don't know because I haven't looked at it myself. I just never could find that in a while. I have used it myself to get them to call. Mala project.

Yeah. Great restaurant. To make a reservation. I just like, I keep coming back to this thought of, who is this actually for? Because I don't know. The way I live my life is not like I'm like, what is that restaurant I like? And I need to make a reservation at the restaurant that I like enough to make a reservation, but not enough to remember it. You're getting to a point that I've had with a problem that I've had with AI is that, you know, you have to know how to prompt it.

Yes. Great. But that's what Amazon's trying to solve with the next. new Alexa thing because... Trying to sell. Yes, exactly. Which I'm sorry, I had a long conversation with someone else about this. Alexa invented that type of problem.

Yes, exactly. So you get us to learn how to talk to our assistants in a very specific way. Now you want us to talk naturally to it as if that's not learning a whole other type of behavior. It's a whole language. As if it's going to work like I'm talking to my friends. It's not. I can get like all kinds of incensed about this. I was testing, what was it?

I got a demo of Project Astra back at audio. And I was just like talking to it and they were like, no, no, no, you can talk normal. And I was like, I have Esther. Yes, you have to remember. I have like 13 from Google. Fricking, freaking years of going, hey Google, sorry, hey Google, Alexa. You know, like that exact. Very specific voice.

Cingo bongo, little girls. I am so excited for a bunch of your listeners. They punish me every day. You need a warning at the start of this episode to mute all your devices, I think. No one should be warned. Just so I do that on our podcast. Yeah, it's all Ed's fault. I'm reckless.

It is my fault. It's on your listeners for listening. To you without the headphones. I will get someone to beep out if I remember, which I won't. Sorry. We upped at the same time. I was going to say, like, yeah, Project Estra is interesting. I don't know if it will work yet, but Astra is Google's like experimental implementation of Gemini

where, like, you can use your phone's camera to point it around a room and then it'll remember things it saw, even if it's on frame right now. I want to be really clear about something. I want to like, if I had a dollar for every single time, a tech exec said, multi-mode. I'm just like, it's rich. No, I want to be really clear on something. They've been promising this stuff for 15 years at this point. Alexa came out in, what, 2014? Or, yeah, 2014, that's when they first announced this.

There's a big reason we haven't seen huge changes, even with fairly good generative AI and fairly good large language models that can listen to us and really understand our speech. And that is because computers still can't process all this stuff. Because if you and I are both in the same room and you're asking Alexa for that restaurant, and I'm saying,

No, no, no, forget the restaurant. What movie we want to go to do it? You can only do one stream of data at time. Okay, here's not a call from The Verge. June 13, 2016, Apple opens up Siri to App Developers. This shit is nearly here for a fucking decade. So, I mean, look, I will take note against that, like, nothing has changed because I think the echo speaker alone has changed the way a lot of people think of this.

What does it do? I speak to my speaker a lot. I do, like, it's hands-free control, smart home control for me. For me. That's all. No, no, but elderly people, people who are alone. Yes. Oh, no, it's sick.

I have. People with accessibility issues, mobility issues, they can use that, and it works well, and they're working with voice it to make it better for people with speech embedding. And I agree. That sounds great. It's important. But it's, no, I think voice control super important. Yes, I don't mean Alexa.

I will say all of these products currently are not as good as what they suggest. Exactly. They are not that helpful for the elderly. Like, there's that measure of help. They, they, they. They sow their oats on things like, and you're right to say that, by the way. But they're like, oh, you can't hate this because the elderly might. No, no, no, no, no.

You absolutely should do this. I can and I will. I'm doing it right now. It's not universal, right? It's like smart glasses when they first came out. Everyone was like, fuck that. Glass was cute, though. No.

Still my LinkedIn picture. Anyway. Scobble in the shower. But it had use cases in Enterprise for a long time. And that's where it thrived because it had a specific. use case for a specific time. But here's the thing. And it's too expensive for that. And how often was it actually used for that?

Because that's the thing. They always say it's got play in the enterprise. How much play? How much revenue? How much use? Do you know how many people are putting on a hollow lens right now to turn some sort of wrench on a pipe? Like, like zero.

No, that's also. That's also a good point. But like, there's nothing wrong with some of this tech just being very use case specific. Right. just exploring it that way. If they were selling it on that. If they were selling it on that, if they were being honest about that. But they're making it something for everybody.

That's how they make the money that they want to make. But they don't even make the money now. Alexis lost billions of dollars. But they don't even like acknowledge. It's not that it's to get a higher valuation from the stock market. It's all just for investors to be like, well, they're going to do something in 20 years. I mean, that's the entire reason. Elon Musk is in our business.

So like the one was the other thing that came out this week that they're going going to add like live translations to the AirPods possibly and all of that sort of stuff. Which I think is already on Google. It's already on the pistol. It's already on the pistol. They talk about how like AI can enable live translation all in time. I've tested a bunch of live translation stuff and it's only good for like, where is the bathroom? Here is your bill.

It's not good for real conversations. You were supposed to have real conversations and I wrote about this when the Humane came out and absolutely could not for its life translate a single fucking thing I said. As like, I know it's wrong who don't speak the fucking language. That too. But then like, you know, the other thing is it's just like there are times where I wish that I had some sort of like AI translator in my life. Universal translator thing. That you could trust.

Yeah. That I could trust. Like when my mom was sick, the thing that they don't tell you about the neurodegenerative diseases is that you will lose your second language as it happens. So my mom lost her ability to speak English. My father lost his ability to speak English as well. They raised me so that. that I did not speak Korean well.

I can understand it, but I can only say like, bagel pot, I'm hungry. So they could understand you, but you can't get them to understand you. So, like, my family, I mean, we operate as if I am Chewbacca,

the English-speaking Chewbacca, and everyone else speaks Korean. And we understand each other. I am Korean Chewbacca in my family. But in any case, just give me a phrase in Korean jubaka that would be. Like, I'll just be like,

so actually, like, my Korean is such that in my brain that like one time I was in, a taxi cab with non-Korean speakers and he was asking us a question and I understood him and I told him where to go I don't know the words I use but I told him where to go accurately and my friends were like

you lying bitch you speak Korean and I was like no I really can't You just blacked out I blacked out and I just told him how it's like when Ron used Parseltong and Chamber of Secret yeah it's like that's my Korean no no no Ron did it and got a final Deathly Halos anyway but like me speaking Korean is just like there we go

I agree obligatory No, no, it's funny. But yeah, no, so like when you get to the translation thing, it can't do slang. It can't do the fact that, like... I will admit, when I did talk to the humane AI in Cantonese, it did do colloquial better than any other language translator I've used, which is hilarious. It feels like translation, though, is the most obvious one where it can't fail. Because the nuances of language, and I...

So I have a coordination of disability, dyspraxia spatial awareness. It really affects my ability to learn languages because structural concepts not so good. So learning, I couldn't learn French, I failed French, Latin, German, Spanish. I'm like, the school kept throwing them at me. It's like, ha ha, fuck you. You're really good at failing. I love that. No, I'm like the fail master.

And it was because, like, the way English works is very different. Also, I didn't care and was very depressed. But it really was the structural stuff, like trying to learn another language when you don't get those concepts. And I imagine large language models also have this problem. And then add to the fact that not all languages are higher, like English. is a very low context language and Asian languages are high context. I don't even know what that means.

So what that means is a lot of things are unsaid basically. A lot of things are unsaid. A lot of things are like how you talk to a person in Japanese and Korean, which are my languages that I studied, depends on are they older than you. You're going to talk to them differently. And there's no way for the language to express that.

You're going to be using things in that to express that. Or like if I say something to you in Japanese, Japanese and I'm just like, so classic business example that they give for Japanese is you ask a yes or no question and they go like, ooh, that might be difficult. That means no. Okay. Oh, Singlish is like this. Singlish has a saying called Ken is can, which means it can't be done. Like, it's an, you can, you can do this? Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can. That's the sort of thing. How is LLM meant to pay? Yeah, you can. Up. How is it supposed to know that, well, this is why not everyone at the UN is wearing a B at the moment. or the Google headphones or any of these other ones. This is why they have real human translators. We see this translating stuff work. But you're paying for the trust. Yeah.

Yeah, you have to pay for the trust because Google Translate is really, really great if I need to double check something. But if there was ever a time where I needed to be like, hey, I need to know what this is in Japanese, I am not asking Google Translate. I'm texting the very basic things. Like if you're saying like, oh, I have. Oh, so another thing was like I would have friends visit me when I lived in Japan and they would be like, oh, I can't eat this because I'm a vegan.

I was like, we can't say that you're a vegan. They won't understand that. And Mandarin, we don't have that either. You have to say that you have an allergy to meat. And then they'll take it out for you. And that is a psychological allergy. Yeah. See, this is the thing that drives me insane about all of this, because we're looking at right back to

hating Kevin Roos's work. But it's like these people vigorously beating off about AGI, it's like based on an entire industry of people saying, yeah, it sort of works, but it doesn't. and by the way, it burns billions of dollars, and by the way, will it get better? Yeah. Probably not. But it will.

My company is so powerful and strong and so weak and sick, it's the best thing ever also is dying. And this is exactly what they said with VR. They said, you know what? Give it a minute. If we just keep going, everybody's going to be doing VR.

Everybody's going to be moving on to AR. And it doesn't happen because they're trying to force something. It's not the phone. But it's kind of like, but it's kind of like VR in the sense that like, for VR to work in the ready player one, which is fucking insane. If you're already player one to be real.

I thought that's your touch point. But also, terrible film, worst book, written for simpleton book. Of all the VR examples you can of use. Remember all the things that you know? But also that film was a dystopia. The other thing is it's an extra sensory psychological experience. You would need things that do not even the beginnings of it. You don't have something that can take over your senses and you can move in a space vastly different.

Accessibility in VR and augmented reality is like really tough. We're not even there. And in the same way with AI, we don't have a thinking computer. This shit can't do anything on its own. You try and like, oh, agents are here. Fuck you. Agents are nowhere. Stop using that word.

Every time you use the word agent. Norman Finkelstein. Mr. Borrelli. Anyway, for reference to people. I love voices. I love doing voices. I love voices. I love voices.

It's just every time I hear from these fucking companies and how much money they have. And they're like, here is something that sucks. It stinks. You should be so excited. You need to be excited for this. It sucks. It doesn't do the thing you want it to do.

Can it do this? No. Will it do this? Trust me. Well, if you get us to our next round of funding. But even if you're like Amazon or Google. Yeah. Apple.

The thing I hate most about all of this, that beyond everything we've already said, and I think we've already kind of alluded to this with what you just said, which is spending a lot of money on things that don't work. But we're in the process generating a lot of ways, generating a lot of like energy laws. All the server farms that are just going to take over this world just to back up and store all of that data that they're scoping and like grabbing from you. That is the only reason I love AI is every time I'm like, am I pretty? I know it is costing someone so much money to have that little shitty robot be like, you're the cutest. A dump truck of like animals into a furnace.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah. You're burning our planet. to get validation from quad. Thank you. How many bees have they sold? That I don't know. They're in like a beta thing. Okay.

It's technically an Apple Watch app too. You don't actually need to buy their hardware. Fuck yeah. This company rules. I fucking love this. They're so... How many Humane AI pins have caught in fire in and are now in the trash because they turn all the features off?

They said 10,000 units, they said? Yeah. That company doesn't exist anymore. Humane was the biggest like dunce moment for members of the media. It was so great. name. So many people were like, this is going to be great. Even though it was like, yeah, it's a 700. They got so mad at me when I wrote my translation piece and they were like, we need to

talk. And then I was like, let's talk. Was it Bethany that reached out? Yeah, they ghosted me. Two management consultants, both like indignity. Anyway, we have to bring this to an end because we are running out of time and otherwise I'm just going to start reading the Kevin Roos bit again. That motherfucker fucking, I just. As an irresponsible piece to write.

It is irresponsible. I think that that is a good kind of place to get some final thoughts where it's like it's not just that these things don't work and they stink and they're expensive and they burn billions of dollars that destroy the environment they steal from everyone. Not just to that sure. Yeah. Other than those things, by representing them as imminently useful and helpful, the only thing you are doing is empowering the powerful and creating more cycles where useful things don't get funded and useless things get more money than ever. and it's disgusting. I know it sounds a little dramatic to be like, the guy said the computer was too smart,

but you're speaking on the New York Times, and it's not just him, it's Ezra Klein as well, another fucking moron. Jesus fucking Christ, these guys. Put one, just like, put like anyone in this room. I think they do a much fucking better job. But it's just like,

it's empowering people who do not have anyone's best interests in mind or actually fixing anyone's real problems. And or are out of touch. Yes. I still maintain if you get a certain income, you're not allowed to have online. Like, you can't talk online. Yeah. Because you are so out of touch from the rest of us.

I don't want to hear it. What's the number? Way more than I make. Well, yeah, but a million or a hundred mil? It's like a couple of million, right? Yeah. Like if you're like, oh, I can go spend 12K on a first class ticket, you have too much money. You can't talk anymore.

No, it reminds me if the Sam always. moment on this my favorite notebook podcast where he's like, yeah, so I write my little notes, and I crumpled them up, and I throw them behind me. That's a really good accent. The housekeeper comes by, and she, I don't know where she comes, which means she's there all the time. And it's just like, first of all, you sat in front of a person you have a housekeeper.

Second of all, you could not remember when they're there, which means they're always there. And third of all, you're just creating, like your fucking AI. You're just creating trash information that you throw around and expect someone else to clean up. Loads some little fucks. Anyway, great place to end it. Sherlyn, where can people find you? Angata.com And I guess I don't know what social media platform to shout out.

Blue Sky, shirlin. Dot B Sky.Sky. Alex? Yeah, I'm about to spark. Spart. I'm going to start this over again. Okay, that's enough. Yeah.

Yeah, I am about to start a four-week special engagement at Gizmodo. I'm going to be hanging out with those folks and saying all sorts of things that really need to be said about technology, because, oh boy, are we in a moment? In a great moment. And you can also find me on all social media platforms until I make enough money where I don't have to use them. Beautiful. Victoria?

You can find me at Vic M's song on every social media platform and I write at The Verge. You can find me on the New York Times. My name's Kevin Roos. Oh, God. And I will be saying multiple... Catfished. We've been catfish.

I am Kevin Roos. No, you can find me on all my social media platforms. Ed Zichron, there isn't another one, thankfully, because I think they... Weren't you in the New Yorker, though? Aren't you at the New York? You were recently. Yeah.

They catch up too spicyed me. They were like right at the beginning of it. I didn't think that he wasn't recording yet. And he was like, yeah, it was like, yeah, is the Kung Pow chicken spicy? And they're like, yeah. Thankfully, he kept up the bit where it was like, is the plum chicken spicy? And the bit where I was like eating white rice and going, hot, hot. Me going on hot ones and just drinking the milk.

Let's get Sindibu after this. Please don't kill me. But yeah, thank you for listening, everyone. It's been another radio, Better Offline. And Alexa, play Tool, 46 and 2. That's cruel. Some bangs, I don't care. One of the greatest songs of all times.

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-O-S-K-I-D-S-K-I. 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 YourEd.at to visit the Discord and go to R slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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