It Could Happen Here - The AI 'Ick': What Big Tech Is Bringing for 2025

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Robert and Garrison wade through the insane fever dreams of a thousand madmen to bring you the future of consumer electronics.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a Playboy model. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in.

It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, it's James coming at you with a pretty nasty cold here. I wanted to share with you that wildfires have swept through Los Angeles in the last couple of days while I'm recording this. Thousands of people have been displaced, five people have died that we know of so far, thousands of structures have

been burned and many, many people in the A.A. will be finding themselves out of their homes with nowhere to go and with very few resources. If you'd like to help, we've come up with some mutual aid groups who you can donate to and we'll be interviewing one of them on this show next week. So if you'd like to help, the three places where we suggest you would donate some cash are the Sidewalk Project, that's thesidewalkproject.org, Ktown4all, that's letter K, T-O-W-N-F-O-R-A-L-L.org, and EtnaStreetSolidarity, you can find them on Venmo or I think on Instagram as well, that's A-E-T-N-A-S-T-R-E-E-T-S-O-L-I-D-A-R-I-T-Y. All right, I'm gonna go rest my voice. Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here,

a podcast about it happening here, which is really true in a lot of ways tonight. Harrison Davis and I are seated at the glorious, majestical hotel name redacted on the Las Vegas Strip. We got a long day at CES. Long day. Listening to panels, catching up with the latest tech news, trying gadgets,

and also at the same time texting our dear friends in Los Angeles as unprecedented fires sweep them from their homes. Literally, the Gettys threatened Pasadena and Santa Monica are both being evacuated as once. It's a real one-two punch of America's favorite tech show in the apocalypse today.

How are you feeling, Gar? It's an average day in America. Average day in America. Temperature's not coming down anytime soon. No, no. Well, I'll just take a moment to breathe with that. So you wanna start us off with what you did this morning. I was panel guy yesterday.

There was a man of action walking around and mostly trying all the free massage chairs. What did you see this morning? I saw so many AI panels, half of which I left halfway through because I knew they weren't going to be useful for me. Just dog shit. The other half I took notes on and just got sad. But no, today was full panel, starting bright and early in the morning

where I walked into a panel where I heard augmentation and not replacement, about 20 times in the span of like 20 minutes. Yeah, I keep hearing versions of that too in the A&N Hollywood panels. They would be like, you know, we wanna develop a machine that can read the brains of our viewers

and alter the endings of movies, you know? But we see this as a way of augmenting the artist's work. Yes. And the biggest thing I noticed across multiple panels today is an almost like anxiety among these tech executives about consumers rejecting the AI sloppification of everything. And they're trying to find ways to like actually force people to start like using these products or having them like like it. Yeah.

And I haven't really sensed that anxiety before. It's it's all it's all been very, very positive. And I think it's a mix of number one, the money still isn't there where they need it to be. It has not started like blooming to the extent that they were expecting it by now. And the other part is people are still not happy with this stuff. I'm glad you felt that too because that most was like especially after the election like I don't trust my feelings on this that they're really scared but I really do think there's a piece of that coming through. No a phrase one of the panelists

used this morning was the AI ick like like how do we how do we beat the AI ick and if you ever do we, how do we beat the AI ick? And if you ever say to yourself, how do I stop having people feel an ick around me? Maybe you should really look inwards. Yeah. Maybe the problem's you, not them. You know, who doesn't need to worry about quote unquote ick for their product market is people who make things that people like. So, but I heard a lot about, you know, in trying to get people to use these

products, it's like making sure artists don't feel like they're being replaced instead, having their like art production process be augmented with AI and how, how that can make art easier to make while still keeping the human at the center of AI tools. And this is just what they talked about for like a while while reiterating that lots of the developments they need to see on AI, they have it on the tech side, what they need to rely on is consumer acceptance to really drive that innovation to see like what they can get away with. Like how much will the consumer accept the slothification

of art and entertainment and customer service and all these things are trying to cram AI into and like how much worse can you make the world before people? Stand up and stop you with their fists or guns and you mentioned something about like trying to like tailor like movie endings For specific people and I definitely heard some stuff about that There's this one guy who was who was like the the panels resident like content creator He was supposed to like represent like the artist block even though he's like, yeah He was supposed to represent the artist block, even though he's like... Yeah.

You know, some kind of AI-friendly content creator, though, on this panel. And he talked about how, like, back in the day, you needed to have friends that would recommend your music. And the Spotify algorithm is too based on an echo chamber, which you already like. But now, with agentic AI, this allows trust between the consumer and the machine to recommend new music. And again, so much of these AI products is just trying to replace friendship for these people. Have you tried having friends? Have you tried knowing people? How can you engage with art and culture without friends? How can you learn more about what your friends are into, what they like?

How can you discover new music without that like without that, instead of replacing that beautifully human process. Every year at CES, there are points in time where I get that like, oh yeah, 2020 really fucked us up a lot. Like 2020 really did some lasting damage. Like I know it was that was happening with the younger generation before had the iPad kid generation, but like that, that really did a number on some folks. Someone from Metta, right? Facebook, specifically they're like Metaverse division,

which they're still trying to push for by the way. Oh yeah, no, I mean, they're still calling it Metta, which honestly there's a degree in which I almost respect it because like we are not biting. No, no one is, but she talked about how they can like blend the Metaverse and AI to make customized personal experiences. Say that you're watching an immersive live concert in mixed reality, something that both

me and Albert do all the time. Oh man, I love mixed reality. You and me, we're watching our Harry Styles mixed reality concerts. We're seeing the 100 gecks. Honestly, a 100 gecks mixed reality concert could go crazy. Yeah, well, finally, I'll finally get you piled on real big fish. But basically, as you're in this like metaverse concert, they can have an AI that will sense your own excitement

and personalize the ending of the experience based on your favorite songs or artists. So as you're getting excited, some like an AI, Taylor Swift can like finish the song like for you based on like your own like Musical tastes based on what the AI knows about you and it's about creating these customized experiences It's such it you can clearly tell that none of these people have souls, right? it's such a mismatch of what people get from music because they think that like oh This is just like a if I see that like this specific beat line is guy

I can just sort of like plug this in and like, no, no, no. Like what makes people react to musicians and artists is that they like make things that make them feel something. Like that's why people get like really into artists is they feel seen and identify with a piece of art as opposed to like, oh, oh, that guy really liked the first opening bars to fucking octopus's garden. Like, let's, let's just like really turn up the octopus a lot. More octopuses.

Ten percent more octopus. How many more octopuses can we fit in this fucking, in this track? No, another panel I went to later in the day was about like, how do you market to Gen Z? Very funny panel. Yeah. And they're talking about how authenticity is so important. You need to partner with influencers that have an authentic brand. And it's funny having that juxtaposed with these AI slot panels where you need an AI Taylor Swift

to come boost the excitement for all these kids who are in their Metaverse concerts. Oh boy. But no, personalized personalized content, like targeting AI-generated content specifically for certain people, for certain users, whether that's on social media, whether that's on the Metaverse, like some of these people talk about. Someone on the panel from Adobe, who's integrating a whole bunch of generative AI into their suite of products, like Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Big, big company in the creative space. He said that personalized content is always the most impactful,

content that a person feels like a genuine connection to. And that connection can be formed by just being a compelling artist, where you can recognize shared experiences of humanity. But now you don't need that artist part anymore. He said they only need three parts to create a pipeline. You need data, you need compelling like journeys to take the user on, and you need the content itself.

And the goal is to create content at scale that's highly personalized. He said, he quote, we're good at the first two parts. Now we just need to improve the actual content side, which I don't even think that's true. I don't think AI is good at creating compelling human journeys. So the video I didn't play you guys from my terrible fucking AI generated videos was this, it was like a girl coming to college

and you get a picture of her dad. It was like a narration of her life with her father who like is dead that she misses and all that she learned from her dad. And it like, it's a mix of like all these different, like there's a chunk where it looks like a Disney animated picture. There's a chunk where it looks like anime. She and her dad having these like adventures around the world. There's a bit of it that looks like a Marvel movie.

And he's like, we can do all these different, you know, animation styles and they're seamless. And like, you know, the audience really goes on a journey with this. And it's like, but there's, there was no girl who lost your dad. Nobody lost their dad here. You just had a computer generate text about a dad dying. Like there's nothing underpinning this, right? Nobody has anything they're trying to get across.

Like you just, in this one, they look like Marvel heroes for some reason. In this one, they look like Zulu warriors, kind of done up in a slightly racist Lion King style. Like what is being transmitted other than like, look at all of the different art styles we can rip off. No, they do not have a journey, but even they themselves admit

that they still don't have the content. The content itself still isn't even there. And that's something like they even acknowledge. And this is like a hurdle to, this is a hurdle to get over. What they do have is the data. And like, this is like something that Adobe this is a this is a hurdle to get over what they do have is the data and like this is like something that Adobe has done because if you use Adobe products now some of the most used

creative products Adobe trains all their all of their AI systems on the stuff that you make using their products which you know he really just blazed past that point is that that's a whole other discussion but even they know that they don't have like the actual products and and this is still reliant on consumer acceptance. As they said before, someone from Metta, the same person on the panel, that talked about how a few days ago on Instagram, they tried to announce, you'll have AI profiles,

completely AI-generated pictures, profiles, fake people who have their own accounts. And this created such a big backlash that they rolled this back and they simply announced this before CES. One of these accounts was literally like, I'm a mother of two queer black woman, you know, I got a lot to say about the world. Someone call up the situationists, please. And some like people started talking to her like, were any black people at all involved

in like making this chatbot? And she was like, well, no, and that's a real talking over like where any black people at all involved in like making this chat bottom She was like well, no, and that's a real problem Okay, yes, and the excuse that this person from meta said is that the market just isn't ready yet It's not that the actual product itself is like bad or like no one really wants just the markets not ready yet Well, they're so used to Everything that they've done so far. They've kept getting money, right? And like it's slowed down and they've had to do layoffs,

but like nobody's just made them stop at any point, which honestly, you know, I made a comment about healthcare executives a while back needing like a fucking retirement plan paid in millimeters. So I'm not gonna make that same comment about tech industry ghouls because, you know, we all know what's in the news, but something has to be done to force these people Yahoo to stop moving in this direction.

And I don't know how to get across it. Like they're already at this point, like, oh, my me. They seem to really want not want this. And we have to find a way. They're not want this and we have to find a way They're just not ready. We have to find a way to force this on them. There's a few ideas I don't know how to get across to them in a peaceful manner. Oh, sorry. We people don't want this I'm a man of peace. Get resin. I'm a man of peace. I'm not a plumber The the last thing I add about this panel just in terms of how much this stuff is actually taking over more and more of the market, even if people don't want it, is that the guy from Adobe announced that in the fourth quarter of last year, they were able to boost all of Adobe's emails.

If you send an email to Adobe, you have a problem, you need help, but everything that they do on emails is now 100% generated by AI. And this was boosted from 50% at the start of last year. Now it's 100% of all of their email content is now done by AI with some moderation by humans. Does that mean there comes, like when the company itself is like communicating with customers through email? That's what it sounded like, yes. They're still writing emails sometimes to each other or is it all AI for that too? He described it as like email content.

So I'm pretty sure it is like- Content then probably. Customer service stuff, like marketing maybe, like certain like outreach things. But yeah, like 100% now generated by AI with some human like moderation. But yeah, that is where things are moving. And that's how I started my morning.

Well, better than a cup of coffee is that sense of creeping dread that like, wow, I just saw a bunch of people who will probably would rather kill the world than be stopped from shoveling AI slop into people's mouths because this is the only future they can imagine is one in which they work for a company that feeds the planet poison and kills the human concept of creativity so that they can buy a house in San Francisco. Do you know what I want to feed the concept of? Yeah, we'll talk about that, but here's some ads.

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Let's be buddy. Oh, let's talk about that helicopter. No. Yeah. I think as I was going from panel to panel, scribbling notes on AI as some very exciting news stories dropped that we'll talk about later. What were you up to, Robert? Well, I was trawling the show floor, as I often do at some point in a CES. And I came across a number of majestic products.

A lot of it was AI-based. We'll talk some more about that here. But I ran into something that was, thank God, had nothing to do with AI. And it's a death trap. Every one of these, there's like some sort of... Every CES we find a new death trap. There's a lot of connected vehicles, there are a lot of EVs. Last year there were a ton of different flying taxi type options. People that were really trying to convince us...

But you don't see it all this year? Nothing this year. Nothing this year because it's a terrible idea. The terrible idea. The people who are rich enough to pay for flying vehicles don't want it to be a taxi. And the people who can't afford their own flying vehicles also can't afford, anyway. So this is, instead of any of that, Richter. Richter. R-I-C-T-O-R.

Richter. Which is a Chinese company. Their ads say, I'll say, why be normal? The future of- Many people are saying this. The future of travel will not be on the ground. Chinese company, their ads say, I'll say, why be normal? The future of- Many people are saying this. The future of travel will not be on the ground. And the Richter is a hybrid.

It is like a smart car style size vehicle. It's like half the size of a smart car. It only has two wheels though. It looks more like a scooter. It's more like a weird little scooter golf cart thing. Like a Vespa almost. But it's fully enclosed. And in addition to having its wheels

and being able to travel about on the ground, it has four like quadricopter style rotors because it is an aquatic flying car. Aquatic flying. I saw no evidence that it could actually go in the water. How high can these things go up? Less than 200 meters. You know why, Garrison?

Why is that? Because if you try to go above that, you need a pilot's license. You don't need a pilot's license? I have that, when I was interviewing them, I was like, so I assume there's gotta be some sort of pilot's license for this flying craft. And they're like, no, as long as you stay

under 200 meters, you're good. Do you need a driver's license? Are you gonna put a license plate on this? Or is it like- There's no space for one, buddy. Is it completely unregulated? I'm gonna be honest, and I don't say this for any problematic reason, but like, these folks are Chinese and did not seem to have a great deal of knowledge about the US Awards

laws. Sure. That said, I can't imagine China's less strict about personal aircraft. I would love to take this fucker on the I-5. Just start zooming. Zoom it up in the air. Because you could probably do like a pretty good road trip on this, right? You can maybe go- zooming up in the air. Cause you could probably do like a pretty, a pretty good road trip on this, right?

You can, you can, you can maybe- Well, about that. So it's very small and it's completely electric. So I asked him, how much time do you get in the air with this bad boy on battery? Maybe 25 minutes. What happens after 20 minutes? I did ask this and I was like,

is this just rough out of the sky? And they were like, no, we're working on like a, like an intelligent thing that will like force it to the ground. Yeah, which is also very exciting. Really looking forward to seeing how they pull that off. The videos that they have show it driving on the highway too. They weren't able to tell me what a top speed was. It has no rear

view mirrors and no side view mirrors, but they said there's lots of cameras on the inside, so I'm sure that's fine. It's a death trap. This thing will get everyone who even looks at it wrong killed. They showed me a video of the prototype. It was completely frameless. It was just quadricopter blades and like a chair on a platform lifting a guy into the air. It couldn't go forward or backwards, but they're like, it couldn't go forward or backwards. But they're like, yeah, we can have this figured out. It can't move forward to backwards.

It only went up in the videos I saw. So you can't actually travel anywhere. Absolutely not, absolutely not. I couldn't, by the way, I couldn't fit in this thing. Like you would be cramped in this fucker. But it's good for vertical travel. It's great. If you just need to go up to under 200 meters. There's no more efficient way.

Perhaps if you get pulled over by the cops, you just go up above them. I'm in the sky now. You can't do shit to me for 25 minutes. Oh, my God. It's not if you're just driving, you go up to 100 kilometers, which made me think, so what does that get? That's like 60 miles per hour. If I'm in the air for 20 minutes, then I land then my battery's dead. Then you can't go anywhere. Then you can't go anywhere. You can't get back home. The battery issue is gonna be troubling.

This seems completely useless. But as we've heard non-stop the past two days, this is the worst it's gonna be. This is the worst it's going to be. This is the worst it's going to be. Only going to get better. Things only ever get better? That's what everyone was trying to insist upon to me here. What else did you see on the show floor that caught your eye? Garrison. So many magical, wonderful, marvelous things.

Most of which were just like various different AI-connected smart houses. That was what Samsung was showing off. That was what LG was showing off. But I believe you saw one as well, right? Yeah, I mean, I walked through the LG booth. It was kind of the same as last year. The Samsung booth was too intimidating. But I should check it out, because last year we didn't do the Samsung booth

because we were going to. And then either one of us threw up or spilled something hey okay okay yes did I did I did I pour my kratom into a cons into a carbonated beverage that spewed a geyser of blood red foam into the sky around us. Into the white Samsung garbage. Did the security guard stare at me as it happened? Did I set the drink down as it continued to spew and said, I'll go get some towels and then leave forever?

We never got towels. Yes. We left so fast. We fucking bounced. So we couldn't do the Samsung booth last year. Maybe I'll try it this year, but tell me about these smart houses. Well, Gar, Samson has a great idea for a smart house.

First of all, you remember that game, The Sims? No. Well, they're really betting that you do, because their current plan is design your home with AI-powered map view. Okay, okay, sure, sure. You feed it like a picture, you lay out your floor plan in your house and it gives you like a 3d model and you can take pictures of your furniture or pictures of furniture

that you want and then it really plays it around and you can place them now. Couple of things. One of them is that there's no scaling done by the AI. So it's up to you to figure out how the furniture you might want to buy measures up in comparison to the apartment. Sure, sure. But it does look like the actual like map that they've got. I'll show you the picture that I took. I'll try to put it up somewhere. Like it looks like the video game, the sims. No, yeah, that doesn't look like the sims. You're populating like a little 3D CGI house. And I was like, okay, well, there's, there's

a use there, right? People like planning out, like you're moving into a new apartment. You can like fill it in here. And before you even move in, you can figure out what kind of furniture you need or how your existing furniture will fit in there. I would never have used that.

I usually picked up all of my furniture from the trash before I had a house, when I moved into a new place. But I know people who would have used that, sure. That seems useful. So I talked to them about security. So one thing that concerned me is like, the first guy I talked to was like, oh yeah, I think it's all stored locally.

And I was like, so Samsung doesn't have any access to any of the data on like my house and its layout. And he was like, let me get you to one of our like engineers because he can answer that question. And the engineers answer was, and I'm paraphrasing here oh okay that may be very confident that does make you feel safe about sharing your personal data right yeah on the layout of my actual house well the thing is I really don't like that at all because this is it this is something that people were asking

Facebook slash meta when they were doing like they're you know like metaverse stuff because their headsets are recording, you know, very, very extensively like your home layout. And the whole point, well, part of the point was that some of that data could then be used to send you targeted advertisements based on them seeing everything in your home. And I suspect that Samsung might also have some interest in targeted advertisements being a tech company. But, you know, I could never say. Yeah. And they were, that was not really one thing they had is for like their retail

segment, they had like a live video grocery store ad showing you prices of different produce. And I think like the insinuation that didn't lay out is like, you can change prices on the fly, you know, it would kind of made me think about that. There were some talk last year of like, okay, we want to be able to like face scan customers so we can see if they have money and increase prices for like products for certain people, which I'm sure they're going to try. They're too enticed by that idea not to.

So, so I caught a little bit of that, but they, they really like to the extent of how big, and this was an interesting last year, Samsung and LG, their boots were huge and they had a lot of different gadgets. Samsung's booth is big this year. 40 percent of it was that scan your furniture, scan your fucking like map. There's not that much like stuff. Very little actual shit going on. They've people slap the word AI onto everything. There was another big thing was all Samsung,

because Samsung makes a ton of appliances, they make TVs, all sorts of entertainment products, all of them have this, I forget what they call it, like Samsung tag or something, that you can map it in your phones. You can have a whole map of all of the devices and shit that you have in your phone, and you can control them all from a single point.

No one, by the way, had any interest in answering my security questions there. But also, if you're into that, if you want to have all of your appliances and entertainment things linked up and controlled on your phone, and all of them are Samsung, you don't care. You don't care about it. No. If you're getting a smart home, I don't think you really care about that. But also, none of it was like, yeah, I can control everything from my phone. You've been promising me that literally, like in 2011 at CES, they were promising me you're going to be able to control your whole house from my phone, you've been promising me that literally, like in 2011 at CES, they

were promising me you're going to be able to control your whole house from your phone. Nothing feels new this year. This is the thing, is like even walking through the LG booth, which usually has some really cool new thing, this year, nothing new. No. Nothing new. They slapped the word AI on one corner of their television set. Right. I guess LG does have like a large language model in like one corner of their booth. But like so does everyone else. That's not like compelling. There was SK, which is a South Korea company, their booth. Again, the massive

like AI your life is their big thing, but it's nothing. It's just a big visual display that looks cool. That looks like a bunch of server racks. Like you're in this huge cube of servers, but everything's like a half dozen different actual products. One of them was real-time CCTVs that use an AI out like an LLM type thing to summarize pictures. So I like walked through and it did pick me out as a notable person. So I've got like this people of interest thing where it's like a man holding a smartphone standing next to another man. But also I'm like, well, what does that really get you? Like the fact that you're summarizing up

like these people who are like, this person's kneeling and taking a picture. This person's standing. Cause I like, I actually tried deliberately. I like reached in my bag to try to be suspicious. I like did finger guns and it never marked me out. And like, I didn't pull a real gun or anything. Cause I very rarely bring that to the CES floor.

But I don't know, like I can see how there could be a utility there if you're actually able to, say you're setting up like surveillance outside of a residential building and it can alert security that like something is happening outside. There's a potential you if it's good enough utility in that but they didn't display it at the show. It was literally just describing randos from the audience. And like, I just don't see how a security guard is, there's a guy with a phone on outside of the building. Like, ah! Yeah, no, it doesn't seem very new.

It doesn't seem very innovative. Nah. So again, what I'm seeing here, overwhelmingly, for all the talk about like, there's no resisting it, AI is coming, it's gonna dominate everything, This is the next big thing. A remarkable lack outside of what I will say, the one thing where there are continuously new products that are better every year is smart glasses.

Yes. They are getting more impressive and more capable every year. I don't think I'll ever be a smart glasses guy. I hated glasses enough that I let them shoot me in the eye with lasers. Shout out to our Lasik sponsors. But I see why people would like it,

and there seems to be legitimately substantial utility. If we have high-powered smart glasses that look like a regular pair of glasses, I will get a pair eventually, because, yeah, why not? There was a great demo I'm pulling over to, and that LAWK view. They had one glass that was the first world smart glasses for TikTok live,

not particularly excited about that, but they had another set of AR glasses with a 12 hour battery where like, if it works as well as the demo, and that's a big if, but it syncs to like your smartwatch. So it'll tell you, you can see in a heads up display as you're cycling, that was the demo. It'll both like give you directions like in your eyes.

And it seemed to be like fairly well thought out. So it's not like overly corrupting your view. It'll show you your heart rate. You know, it'll show you like all that kind of stuff. So you get like a useful degree of control and assistance from that kind of thing. And that is, I will say the last three CESs, the glasses get a little better

and a little smaller every year. Smaller, certainly. I would say that's a real product that's probably going to continue to improve. Do you know what else always seeks improvement, Robert? No. The capacity for you to get personalized, possibly AI powered ads. Well, that is exciting.

To help you make informed consumer choices. Let's all sit down for some AIpowered ads. To help you make informed consumer choices. Let's all sit down for some AI-powered ads. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Lily podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor? We got the answer!

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer? We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the wooly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today.

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on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Wow. I can't believe they put Jay Shetty's voice in the D.Haged Harrison Ford from the latest Indiana Jones movie. My dick's hard. How are you, Garrison? Oh, I feel good because today, as we are recording this, it's late Tuesday night, there was a

series of fascinating breaking news articles that happened as we were sitting, or at least as I was sitting in on these AI panels. It's been hard to not just completely interrupt everything and be like, yeah Hey, hey any comment on this guys guys something real happened Shut your fucking stupid mouths about this AI Hollywood bullshit so yeah, so a few weeks ago if if you were unaware a green beret rented a test the Cybertruck to feel like Batman and Halo and drove to first the wrong Las Vegas and then eventually Las Vegas, Nevada, parked

outside of the Trump Hotel and Casino and then loomed himself up. And this has been a big news story. It happened during the same day as a pretty horrible terrorist attack in New Orleans, which resulted in about 15 people dead, done by a guy who was employed by Deloitte, a frequent CES sponsor. So these felt like a very CES style of attacks. One Deloitte guy driving into people, murdering a whole bunch of guys, and then this cyber truck explosion in Vegas, like a week before CES, you know, very odd.

And then, and then Robert, some news drops today that I would love to hear you announce. You know, Garrison, I made a comment the other night about how like it's pretty well documented that veterans, you know, not that they're more likely to carry out violence, but when they do, they tend to have higher body counts because they have more skills. It turns out I thought we were getting more literal bang for our buck training green berets than we are. My assumption is, because my uncle was a green beret and he did some very scary, probably war crime-y shit in Vietnam. And I assumed, like that man, I'll tell you one thing about my uncle Jim, that man could make a bomb. That man would not need to ask anyone for advice if he'd needed to make a bomb. He's not with us anymore, God rest his soul.

But it turns out this Green Beret, who, you know, a fucking dollar store TJ Maxx version of the Green Berets is what we're working with now, asked ChatGPT how to build a fucking bomb. And it sounds like he was trying to make it triggered by Tannerite, which is a bipartite explosive compound that you use as like an exploding target. So it'll go boom big, but you have to shoot it with something like a rifle that's high velocity or use like a blasting

cap. Otherwise it's very stable and very safe, which obviously has use, you know, it was invented actually to set off avalanches and stuff. Anyway, because that's very available and very high power He was looking to like fill his car with that and then shoot it with a rifle while he was in it And that's what he was asking chat GPT about so it's not clear to me Actually, the actual headline is that like he used chat GPT to make his bomb It seems and I'm not privy to what the police are obviously

But it seems like based on what I read in the article, we're not sure if he actually used Chad GPT to make a bomb. It's more that he was interested in making a bomb, setting off Tannerite by shooting it, but may have ultimately decided not to do that because he would then be alive for the explosion, which he didn't want to be. Also, the authorities don't seem to fully know

how he triggered it. Yeah. So it's still kind of unclear to me, I guess, hopefully we'll get more later, but he, he definitely needed chat GPT's help to try and figure out how to make the bomb that he said. He certainly used chat GPT in the planning process of this attack. Yeah. Fair to say that.

And it's odd because both me and you spent a number of hours today actually, like attending like demos from like these, you know, speech to text, text to speech, AI systems, we want like two specific ones that they like, you know, demonstrated, demonstrated the capabilities of their like, you know, like AI assistive tech. The first one we went to spent 20 minutes talking about how their biggest inspiration, their quote unquote North Star was the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix. They had a whole slide about how that was the gold standard for AI human communications. The movie Her in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI chatbot voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who hires a prostitute to have sex with him while she participates vocally. And then it turns out the AI is really kind of poly

and Joaquin Phoenix is not okay with it. And then maybe the AI's all go to space. It's kind of unclear at the end. I don't think it was a great movie. A lot of people liked it. I don't see whether or not okay with that. And then maybe the AIs all go to space. It's kind of unclear at the end. I don't think it was a great movie. A lot of people liked it. I don't see whether or not you like it. Why this is your vision of how a chatbot should work. The actual chatbot they had was like fine.

It was actually pretty good at translation. You know, you're translating from Spanish to English. It worked quite well, yes. The demo was like solid. It was pretty accurate. You know, I love coming here and fucking with people. I love like being a dick. They asked for a volunteer.

And at that point we knew about the chat GPT. I wanted to go up and ask like live this robot to like help me make a bomb. But the guy was pretty handsome and like an interesting like English Spanish mix. I like how you specified he was handsome. He didn't want to be mean to him. He seemed nice.

I didn't want to be mean to a handsome guy. He wasn't shitty. No, he was fine. There were like 10 people in this room that was supposed to have 200. I'm sure they were bummed by how it- He wasn't the one that talked about her. No.

That was someone else at his company. That was someone else at his company. And like, he just seemed like he wanted to do, I didn't want to be a dick to him. No, no. He wasn't hurting anything. It was fine. Similarly, we went to this one.

They get a nice jawline. We went to this other one about this, actually a much more dubious concept in my mind, which is this AI assistant to help elderly people, people in their 80s and 90s who don't want to be in assisted living facilities, who have been living on their own, but they're getting to the point in their life

where they need some degree like in-home care. He specified a lot of them are people who have either just lost a spouse or maybe their spouse is aging faster and worse than them and is no longer really able to be the kind of companion that they were before. Yeah. So it's like this it's both like a conversation tool. It helps like memory recall kind of in some ways has the the features that like you know someone in their 60s would just use their smartphone for to help keep in touch with their family. It's kind of simplified and more automated.

So, you know, ways to help keep in touch with your family, improve your memory, talk about your own life. And the device is weird. It's about the width of a bedside table, maybe six to eight inches deep. So think about 18 inches long to maybe six to eight inches deep. So think about like 18 inches long to maybe six inches deep, something like that. Half of it is like a little tablet, like a seven inch tablet with a speaker. Half of it is something about the shape and size of a head on like a neck that can pivot and nod on the neck.

There's no face. So when it's talking, there's like a white light in the center of it that kind of like pulses in time with the speaking that it does. So we saw this picture of the device and we saw the description of like, this is an AI companion for the elderly. And we were both like, number one, these people are gonna be monsters.

This is going to be like something to shovel your dying dad off with because you don't want to spend any fucking time with them. You don't want to spend time with your family. You're scum. You're too busy AI generating ska music. And trying to sell your shitty robot to Garrison and me. More on that tomorrow. More on that tomorrow.

And so that's what we came in prepped to this meeting. Yeah, because this idea I find pretty distasteful in general is replacing actual friends or human contact or in-home care with a fucking Alexa machine, essentially. And to be clear, I still think this product might be a bad idea that doesn't work, but the guy behind it, who is the dude that we talked to, cares a lot and is really very clearly trying

to do a good thing and thought through the ethics and the efficacy of what he was doing a lot. And I, I, I'm not convinced it will actually do anything, but I like wish him the best. No, like it specifically is designed to not look like a human so that someone who's using it, you know, wouldn't like start to believe it's like human. Yeah, we don't want to trick people. We don't want them to mistake it for a person. It refers to itself like, like as a robot,, as it refers to its own motors and functionality pretty

consistently to make sure that the person who's talking to it gets reminded of that. And something I talk about is there's been a lot of news stories this year about people developing very unhealthy attachments and relationships to these kind of AI programs, like character AI. There's a story a year and a half ago about like a journalist who quote unquote, like, you know, like, like fell in love with some kind of chat thing that resulted in him killing himself. Uh, you know, but these kind of, these systems like encouraging-

Was that a teenager? What was the character AI thing? Was that a journalist? Last year there was, there was a journalist who fell in love with an AI chat thing a few weeks ago. There was the kid who was talking to this like a character. Yeah. I also I just need to reiterate her not a great movie But but you know, there's been a lot of these stories of these things like going wrong or you know encouraging or like not stopping You know like these like intense conversations of like suicidal ideation

Yeah, we're you know, or self-harm, all these things. We brought these up kind of thinking he would flinch away and not wanna talk about it. And he very much acknowledged that he was aware of this and this is something that they were attempting to build in. This is built into it. I think this is still a big problem with this entire industry.

I'm sure everyone would say, this is obviously that we have guardrails for this and then becomes a news story story Windows guardrails fail. Yeah, similarly was to go back to the Tesla bomb Um, you know, they're supposed to be guardrails on chat GPT to make sure he doesn't tell you how to build a bomb and Those guardrails can fail. He showed us one which was like he told the robot. I love you What was it? Leq leqQ was the robot. Yeah, LEQ. E-L-L-I-Q. I love you, LEQ. And the robot responded with a, like, oh, that makes my fans are all spinning or something

like that. Where he's like, I wanted the response to be that it's reminding the person talking to it that it's a machine, that it can't think or love them back. We don't want it to be negative, but we don't want to be feeding into that. And I don't know that that's the best way to do that, but like, at least they're thinking about that kind of thing. Though the thing that was interesting to me is that he built this as the first proactive home AI thing.

So unlike an Alexa or whatever, where it's just waiting for you to ask it something, but it does not chime in randomly to talk to you or it won't like change the subject either. And like continue conversation. This will prompt you out of the blue, be like, hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? Do you want to see pictures of your family? Do you want to see pictures of your family? Do you want to call your son? You know, but do you want to play a game?

Talk to me about that movie you saw last week. Talk to me about that. Hey, remind me, how did you meet your husband? You know, like literally these are all the things it will do. And it had some side features, like if it prompts you to start telling a story, it'll save that as like a memoir thing. So that like, you know, when your elderly mother passes or whatever, it saved up this like collection of stories over the years.

And you can like show it pictures while you're telling it stories and it will listen and it'll have comments and it'll ask you further questions about, so how did you feel, you know, after meeting them this way? That's really interesting, I didn't know that. Explain to me how it worked, and it'll also prompt you to send those to your kids.

And the big thing, almost every kind of dialogue thing would prompt you to send a message to a friend or your kids. So a big part of it seemed to be, this is not a replacement, this is a machine that we hope people will get comfortable with. And then it can prompt them to try to engage with the world more and their loved ones, because our whole goal is to connect them to people. I asked him, he's like, you know, part of this product is designed to like,

you know, help solve like loneliness in older adults. And like how much of this is, I really just like kind of trying to like replace actual human contact with this AI contact. Will that really help globaliness? And he talked about how, I think he said like 90% of the people who use this, it results in actually more communication with their family. Yeah, they have this in like some 2000 homes right now. Yeah, they have like 2000 units. It's like a subscription model. I think it's right now. It's like ninety nine dollars a month.

It's going to be boosted up to like one hundred and fifty with some like extra features in the next year. It's very much still under evolution. So one thing he pointed out is that like, yeah, initially we we had the ability to like connect people to other elderly folks using this. And so they've kind of formed their own community. They have like a weekly bingo game. Asked us to build in more chat so they can message each other directly.

And so some of them are like playing bingo directly now through these machines. And I'm like, well, that seems probably good. Yeah. Cause like, I still am like fundamentally opposed to this premise. Yes. But it's interesting seeing someone.

And it's sad still, but aging is sad. Aging's sad, right? That's not their fault. And it's interesting to see someone like approach this from like a very like compassionate standpoint, even if I find the actual kind of nature of this thing existing to be like deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, I can't not find it off putting, but I think there's a chance that it will help with the real problem. I certainly would prefer if it helped. Yeah. So I don't know, it was kind of, it was a unique in this world of like AIS, it was a unique kind of like product for me

where it's like, I don't know that this application of AI technology will actually do what you're hoping it will. But I got the vibe from that guy I got was nothing but goodwill. He really was trying. Compared to some of the other people we talked to today who are completely soulless.

Yes, yes, nothing behind their eyes. Dead eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. Even the way this guy talked, you could tell, you had a very empathetic voice, like genuinely. He cared very much. One of the things he did is he would tell it, I'm in some pain, and then the robot would cycle through to the pain scale and would try to,

because one of the things it does is it will take information for care and it will text actively. So it's not just communicating with the old person, it will text and message their kids, you know, and whatnot. And try to get- Caregivers, family. And try to prompt their kids, hey, your mom's lonely. Yeah, or it'll even say if, you know, someone like didn't take their meds today.

And again, it's kind of sad, but also his part of this is, he was talking a lot about empathy. And I think just because of the kind of brain you have to have to want to do this, he used it in terms of the machine's empathy, which it doesn't have. But the whole project, it was impossible not to see

that he was a deeply empathetic man who was really trying to make the world better. And I can't not respect that. Well, I think that does it for us here at CES. That's right. What a packed 13... Don't worry, no empathy tomorrow, folks. Just a real dead-eyed monster.

A true villain you're going to hear from in the next episode. I am the best that I'm going to be because I'm starting this week. I can still feel the CES magic. By Friday, I am going to be a different person. I am going to rip some poor PR person to shreds, I swear. rip some poor PR person to shreds, I swear. But yeah, tune in tomorrow to hear our takes from the CES kind of sideshow called Showstoppers, to hear also some exclusive brand new AI-generated ska music. So we'll give you that hint for tomorrow's episode. See you there.

Well, see you all there. I love you all. Go to hell. If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media, for more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way

to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandi B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics

surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We want to speak out and we want this to stop.

Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a player boy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him. From novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.