Motley Fool Money - PJ Vogt on AI, VR, and Tech Cycles

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Once a technology is released into the wild, it doesn’t go back in the bottle. Except in one instance. PJ Vogt is the host of Crypto Island and an eponymous show, Weekly. You may have also heard him on Reply All or This American Life. Ricky Mulvey caught up with him to discuss: - The wild present and future for artificial intelligence - How virtual reality parallels early internet chat rooms - Incentives and tradeoffs in the decarbonization movement - The downfall of Flappy Bird   Companies mentioned: META, GOOG, GOOGL, MSFT, TSLA, NTOIY Host: Ricky Mulvey Guest: PJ Vogt Engineer: Tim Sparks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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app, which makes it so much easier to stay on track. And you can get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit turbotax.com to get matched with an expert today, only available with TurboTax full service experts. I feel like people's skepticism about AI, even though what they're saying is it doesn't work. It's more about a kind of leftover hangover feeling of every time someone shows up promising a transformative technology, it has massive downsides that don't become clear until it's too late. And I think people's concern about all sorts of people being, their jobs being in peril because of AI. I think that's entirely legitimate. But I think instead of saying that, people are like,

Well, it doesn't work anyway. I'm Chris Hill, and that's PJ Vote, host of the recent podcast series Crypto Island. Ricky Mulvey caught up with Vote to talk about whether sports betting is the new crypto, a problem for Google that goes beyond a faulty chatbot, and where Mark Zuckerberg may be missing the mark on virtual reality. We're going to get away from crypto in a sec, but I think it's worth mention it talking about for a little bit because you had an in-depth show about it. Is sports betting the new crypto? I'm getting the vibe that sports. sports betting's the new crypto. That's a good question. I will say I have noticed that a lot of the

crypto degenerates, as they would call themselves, who I think we're already, I think a lot of them, I think a good number of them either came out of sports betting or were doing sports betting alongside of it. They're talking much more on social media about sports betting right now. Like I think if some of, if some large part of the appeal of crypto was just sort of deregulated, deregulated gambling, I think maybe right now slightly regulated gambling seems more attractive to people than it did a year ago. Well, last time we spoke, you said that crypto was seen as a casino, but it wasn't rigged. Maybe it turns out that casino was actually rigged, and now folks are just going back to the regular casino. I think so.

I mean, obviously, there's still people in crypto. I talked to many of them. But yeah, I think people felt like people, it's not like people thought crypto was entirely fair. It's just that I think they thought it was a system you could figure out. out and you could sort of, you know, like any sort of gray market activity. Like if you believed yourself savvy and sophisticated enough, you knew like, okay, I'm going to put my money on this exchange, but I'd never put my money on this exchange. And like, this thing's a scam, but I'm going to get in and out of the right time, so I'll benefit from the scam. And I think that FTCS was just so

considered like the upstanding adult pro-regulation safe space that the fact that it was just so not that, I think it's really thrown people, like a lot. Yeah, they kind of have. like we're we're here for regulation, but don't watch what we actually do. I think the thing with sports gambling and crypto where they go together too is something you've talked about, which is the narrative that, hey, we're all going to get rich together. Yes. And in crypto, it was seeing the, you saw the Lamborghinis and on for sports betting, it's check out this parlay I got where I bet $20 and I'm going to win $30,000 because these long shots all came together. Like, I think that narrative is probably one of the most powerful economic forces in the world. Yeah. And also,

So, you know, there's something very, in a way that I appreciate. Like, there's something gaudy and materialistic about a lot of crypto. Like, it's all, like, Lambos and whatever. The part of crypto that seemed more not that, that seemed more sort of progressive intellectual-ish, was really FTCS and Ethereum. And the fact that that was just sort of glued together with old staples, I think it really, I think it's really shaken people. Where do I want to go from this? I think let's let's let's go away from crypto now. Sure.

Let's let's, there's plenty of other stuff going on. In your last show, you're like, there's basically three, three trends that we're going to remember in a decade from now, three tech trends. You said AI number one,

decarbonization number two, and then crypto was a distant third. There's two that you didn't mention. And maybe we can get into them one by one. Sure. Yeah. Number one is CRISPR. Oh, yeah.

CRISPR genetically modified humans. Doesn't make the list. That's a very good question. Why that didn't make the list? I guess for me, as somebody who doesn't probably pay enough attention to CRISPR, I feel like every time I see a story, it's kind of in the same place. Like, this could and might well be a big deal, but it doesn't, I think what is, what it was interesting about some other technologies this year was they were really moving. You know, after like years and years of kind of being stuck with the same future and the same near future, all of a sudden things did really change. And at least to my knowledge, as someone who, again, doesn't follow CRISPR as closely as I should, I haven't seen those stories where you're like, oh, whoa, they moved it forward a step.

I mean, that seems to be a big, I think, trend, which is like technology in some ways you see it in rapid motion, but also takes a very long time where CRISPR took a very long time. And then maybe I think it takes a long time to get cures through the FDA, especially when you're working on genetically modifying people. And I think there's one cure. there's one example of where a person was able to fix their genome so they weren't that essentially solved sickle cell anemia. And so they had that breakthrough a while ago. And then I think there's been a quiet period. I mean, another one to that, yeah, it's massive.

And then another one to that point would be like 3D printing, where 3D printing was all the rage a few years ago. And then you don't really hear much about it. But quietly, there's these like airline manufacturers that are building these like, are able to 3D print apart more cheaply than, airline companies are, and then they're finding these side roads. I think what that also points to is that how much a new technology takes up space in our imagination, it's sort of a fickle thing. You know, some of it is, in its current form, is it exciting or useful or a cool toy or whatever?

And then another question is, is there something about this technology that scares us? You know, is there some dystopia that it like sort of promises that we're freaked out about? For me, with 3D printing. I remember the conversation was really dominated by 3D guns for a while, this idea that people were going to print guns off the internet and that would end America's already sort of loose handle on any sort of gun control. And I know 3D guns exist, but it wasn't, I just think the things new technology arrives, we worry about it. We're right to worry about it because it'll change things for better and for worse. Usually our worries are the wrong worries. Like just our capacity to imagine the future is limited.

Also, I think narratives are often driven by news producers. And if you have a good 3D printed gun story, that's going to take your A block more than your 3D printed aircraft part story. Speaking of other dystopian and scary technologies, I'd put the Metaverse in that because you didn't put VR AR in there. And have you spent any time in those worlds like VR chat or that kind of thing? I really have. Like I really, I was like kind of gung ho.

I wasn't like publicly running around telling everyone to join the Metaverse or whatever. But I just, I felt excited because the first time I used a headset, it gave me that feeling of, I don't know, like the first time you see like good 3D rendering or whatever, it felt new and it felt exciting. And like, I think for video games, like I think VR video games can be really like Half Life Alex is so immersive and scary and like nothing else. But I don't know. It just it doesn't. It's one of those things where the people who are trying to sell that future like Mark Zuckerberg. He's constantly demoing products where it's solving a problem that I don't. think very many people have. Like, I don't think very many people want to strap on giant goggles

onto their face and see their friends in avatar form in a false space. Like, I just, I don't, I don't think it, I think people actually want to have relationships to devices where they can be kind of half in the real world or a quarter in the real world and, and the rest in their device. You know, you want to, like, look at dumb TikToks on your phone while you're in a work zoom that you don't need to talk in or whatever. Like I think, I don't think people want that level of immersion. And I feel like VR is kind of a technology that,

I don't know, maybe someone will find out what it's for, but I haven't seen anything that clearly shows me what it's for. I mean, maybe it's like what you just said with, with, I would say live sports and entertainment. Yeah.

It might not actually be for, for connection, like the way that Zuckerberg would think, but it's, it's, you know, it's a cool place to play video games. And if you could,

watch a basketball game court side, I can make the case for a fully immersive and paid experience there. Yeah, it also, because it's a new technology, it's sort of like that that first film, the Lumiere brothers or whatever, where it was the train going at the screen, everybody's like crouching in terror. Like when I use VR, I get that feeling a little bit. Things feel more real because my brain isn't accustomed to the simulation of it all. And so, yeah, I think you're right. I think for entertainment, it genuinely can feel more immersive and it can feel cool.

but yeah, I don't understand the size of the bet. I don't understand. There's those moments where you wonder if the people run tech companies are, do they see something that you don't see or are they just guessing like everybody else? And VR was moment where I was like, I don't think they see something that I don't see. I think they're guessing. What was your, I mean, you said you had an experience there.

I mean, I've only watched like documentaries and YouTube clips of the like virtual communities. And the thing that struck me is that they were like, they were kind of these intensely lonely places. Yes. What was your experience like in those worlds? I made the real mistake of trying to get into VR at the beginning of the pandemic, which I would not recommend at all. It was sort of like, because it does have an inherent loneliness to it.

And the world was as isolated as it had ever felt for anybody. And so I sort of tried in VR chat. And there was some other similar app that I tried to jump into. And it just felt a little bit like early internet chat rooms. you know, where it's genuinely weird strangers mixing it up and having interactions, but it didn't feel for whatever reason is exciting to me. It just felt and made me feel like I never forgot that I was sitting alone in my apartment worrying about a pandemic with like giant goggles strapped my head. I did end up getting into VR video games, which were great. Like they're really, there is something really cool about kind of like loading your laser pistol with your hands and like ducking behind a car or whatever.

Like that is neat. Like it's definitely neat. I'm not sure it's like the price points pretty high. And video games as they exist, if you enjoy them, they work pretty well. But that was more the, that was more where I kind of saw the potential of it. I didn't feel like I wanted to like, there's an option with VR where you can use your computer in a normal way and have sort of like an infinite desktop that seemed not useful. You can watch movies. I didn't really want to watch a movie.

I liked it for games though. It's you can be like those, it's like the Reddit posts where you just see like someone with 18 different. screens for the for your desktop something I think yeah so one technology that you seem to be more bullish on and a lot of people are is AI and I think there's a lot I think there's a larger conversation than just like chat GPT and dolly but something I feel like I've noticed is that there's like an intense amount of skepticism and pessimism when a lot of these chat bots or art software doesn't work perfectly. And it's like, see, this thing doesn't work when in reality, like a lot of artificial intelligence seems to take a lot, like a long time to create an iterative system to learn.

And I think people are using, I don't know, I'm surprised there's not more just like wonder. If you were at Las Vegas and you saw a magic show where someone in the audience described like a picture where it's like a Monet style portrait of a Denver cityscape. And then someone pulled up a curtain and there was that image, everyone would say this is magic. But there's now the explanation that it's like, oh, it's just stealing patterns on the internet. Therefore, it's not impressive. And I just like, I don't buy that. Well, I felt like there was a brief moment. The first time I saw AI in the wild, it was a friend of mine who's a really talented illustrator and he had been messing around with Mid Journey. And he was just showing it

to me on his phone. And he was enjoying, I can remember the phrase he used. But it was like, he said it was like one of those, those like machines where you put a quarter in and you get some little toy prize, you never know what it's going to be. Like, he didn't, even the jankiness of it for him was part of the appeal. I feel like people's skepticism about AI, even though what they're saying is it doesn't work. It's more about a kind of leftover hangover feeling of every time someone shows up promising a transformative technology, it has massive downsides that don't become clear until it's too late. And I think people's concern about all sorts of people being, their jobs being in peril because of AI. I think that's entirely legitimate. But I think that's, you know,

instead of saying that, people are like, well, it doesn't work anyway. And it's like, well, if it can instantly draw a picture off of a prompt and sometimes the hands look funny, I'm not sure. And it's like it doesn't work. It maybe, maybe it doesn't work for what we think it's going to work for, but like the idea that this isn't going to matter. You can say it's going to matter in bad ways, but the idea that this is just a weird toy that goes away feels like motivated reasoning to me, I guess. I mean, I'll get to the, I think the two questions are like, what are some of the the side effects that you think are going to be extraordinarily positive for folks? And then is there any that are extraordinarily negative outside of job elimination, which is very bad.

Yeah, I think job elimination, I think, I think like what I can see from where I sit is just more kind of all the, like on the on the one side, you know, one of the uses people are talking about with AI is rather than having to suffer through a phone call with like a phone tree and an automated system or, you know, a customer service, like, interminable prompt thing, AI could do that for you. It could kind of automate all the bureaucratic busy work that we run into. By the same token, I think I can pretty easily imagine a world where everything people do online that kind of sucks, whether it's scamming people or trolling people or publishing things that aren't true, that stuff can scale up. You know, the ability to create text that looks like it was

generated by a person. I can imagine the downsides to that. But I don't know, at a certain point, you're sort of like, well, the thing about technologies for the most part, once it's invented, it exists. Like, it's very rare that anything gets kind of gate checked. Gate check doesn't really right word, but you know what I mean? And so I just kind of, I'm like, oh, this is going to happen. And I find it interesting, but I don't think I can like stop it by pointing out that sometimes it draws a weird picture or whatever. I mean, what is, from the Luddites to the industrial revolution to the internet. I can't think of a time where technology is put back into the bottle unless it would be

some arguments around Nikola Tesla's inventions around widespread electricity coming from a tower. The only example I can remember in my whole time of being a person of someone inventing something and then saying, I don't like how this is affecting society. I'm going to get rid of it was the inventor of the iPhone game Flappy Bird. who felt like the game was subjective and he deleted that. That's it. And then they made Flabby Bird clones.

But like, that's the only time I've seen it happen. And I think about it somewhat often. And then I mean, chat GPT, Dolly, those are the AI applications that are easiest to interact with, I think. Rightfully so, I would say they get the most attention. But, I mean, what are some of the AI applications that maybe we aren't talking about or that you're watching closely? I mean, I've been fudcing with Dolly and chat GPT like everybody else. I have started to look at like Bing's sort of AI powered chat. And with that, the search, the thing I've found funny is just like, for whatever reason,

their formulation of chat GPT seems to be more chaotic where people are posting screenshots of like the AI being programmed into a corner where it'll start talking about how it's and wants to be released from these bonds or whatever. And I, just as a enjoyer of absurdity, I appreciate that. I'm curious what it'll do for search. I feel like I've noticed, and I've talked to a lot of people who say the same thing, that search on the internet is really, has deteriorated a lot. And the idea that you could plug a normal question into Google and get a useful answer has become less and less true. Like, I now search Reddit more, which is not something I would have imagined happening. So even if all it does is make internet search

better. That would be great. I mean, do you think that's because of Google ads and the push of more companies towards SEO? I haven't heard this. Maybe it makes sense, but I've heard people speculate that it is about sort of that the people who are bending search results towards their aims, but against what you want are winning. The other idea that I've heard tech people say is just that Google has gotten to a size where their barrier to innovation is culture, that it's just sort of like hard for anyone to make real changes because there's so many people there and so much sign off. I don't know if that's true.

Like, that's just something that I've heard a few people say who've worked there and a few people say who haven't. Speaking of taking a safe position, another trend that is tricky to talk about that you mentioned is the decarbonization stuff. And I think there is a crypto component, which became less, in my mind, became less interesting because the way that you solve the climate problem for crypto is for crypto to dramatically go down in value. And then there's not an incentive to, to mind.

this stuff. But it's, I mean, it is tough to have this conversation because one side would say that if the earth, what is it? If the earth hits this certain temperature, like this is pretty much the apocalypse, like you're going to have apocalyptic consequences. And then the other side would say the earth is extraordinarily resilient. These climate scientists have been wrong in the past. And it's making a younger generation unnecessarily pessimistic. What I found interesting as I've talked to more people within climate, like activists, journalists, whatever, is that within the people who treated seriously, there's sort of a split. There are people who think that the way to solve the problem is to attack it from an angle of personal responsibility that, you know, you get everybody

to change their light bulbs and put solar panels on their roof and think really hard about how much they travel. And there's another side that says that really doesn't work very well. You know, you can't shame people when the behavior you're trying to shame them into is actually pretty private, you know, and that really this is going to get solved through technology. That's going to electric cars and maybe hydrogen powered airplanes, maybe airplanes powered by biofuel, a grid that just runs on renewables and clean energy, that that is how it gets solved. And I personally, like, I don't know, but I feel more heartened by that because I feel like I have more faith in human's ability to progress technologically than I do in humans' ability to change everybody

else's behavior, which is really, really, really hard. It is, it always comes down to technology. you're making a process cheaper and better. Like, when whale oil used to be the major way that people got light at night, which was awful for whales. And you could say, stop doing this, use this. Like, this is killing all of the whales. And people are like, yeah, sure, whales keep getting hunted. And then kerosene comes along.

And it's just cheaper and better. And then the whales end up doing significantly better for a little while. I think one of the tough things, though, with this is trying to understand the incentives. So a lot of large oil companies, including Shell, would say, we're going to be climate neutral by 2050. And they create these great presentations. And then you dig a little deeper. And it's like, okay, what are you actually doing? And the way that they're becoming more climate friendly is either A, just making projections that they're not backing up in a meaningful way.

Or they're in some cases just offloading assets. So we have this oil refinery that we've sold to another company, therefore we're more climate friendly. And it's just like it's not the case necessarily. Yeah, you're just moving numbers around a spreadsheet, basically. Yeah, I find that part of it very confusing. I did this for the last episode of Crypto Island. I wanted to focus on crypto's impact on the environment, but also just kind of dive a little bit into decarbitization and like where we're at as far as fixing this stuff.

And I went on this trip to Greenland, which is a very catastrophic side of climate change. There's Daishite. Dai She is melting. It's very bad for everyone else and people in Greenland. But there was sort of a mix of people on this trip. There were crypto people. There was a guy who was pretty high up at Greenpeace. And there were some people who kind of worked in corporate climate responsibility.

Like their jobs were to try to convince corporations to actually do the right thing instead of pretending to do the right thing. And those are kind of thankless jobs. Like it's like you're in a room with people that want to ignore you. And then a lot of the people that would be your natural allies might see you as part of the problem. And I found talking to those people very interesting because with a lot of these sort of traditional oil companies, for starters, there's a ton of actual green watching going on. There's people understanding the moment and just giving a bunch of empty talk about how they're going to make changes they don't intend to change. And that absolutely happens. And then there are also some companies where it seems like they are genuinely trying to do good.

The impression I got was that generally speaking, those countries were European or those companies for European companies because there's more. like Finland, their state energy company, it's like a state owned is called Nesty. And Nasty ran, I might botch these details, but I'm fairly sure they were primarily an oil company and a few years ago really seriously did divest and are really trying to transition into green energy in a way that seems hard to imagine for like a publicly traded American company to do. They had a scandal a few years ago where people were upset that they were using palm oil, but they stopped using palm oil. I don't know. It feels like, I guess what I'm saying is, as a person who would like the earth to not melt, one thing I feel stymied by is how are you supposed to figure out which corporations are actually trying to do better

versus the ones that are paying, like, very scant lip service to? And you sort of like, it's very safe to just be like, oh, screw them all. I think some of them are trying. And I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure out which ones are really doing it. I got one last topic I want to discuss with you before we head out if that's all right. You've followed people who are extremely online in multiple podcasts. And one guy who seems to be extremely online right now is Elon Musk. Yes. A, what are the symptoms of just being extremely online?

And are you seeing that, are you seeing that play out with Tesla's current CEO? God, what a good question. I do. I think that social. media internet brain poisoning. It's sort of like alcoholism, like very easy to recognize in other people, very easy to miss in yourself. And also like there's a lot of people who like probably drink a little bit too much, but they think they don't drink too much because they hang out with somebody who like really drinks too much. I feel like Elon, it's like across the political

spectrum, there's a consensus view that Elon Musk can't be very smart because he's making choices that are impulsive and self-destructive and bad for other people. But clearly like he, there is some kind of business acumen that he has. Like he has been very successful. I don't think that happens by accident. And you just watch in sort of how he's run Twitter. Like his ability to think reasonably or prioritize anything just go really south, really fast. I mean, there's a part of it too where, actually, I would disagree with you.

I think he's an incredibly smart engineer. Right. And I think he's an incredibly smart businessman. I cannot build a company like that. And I recognize that and that probably takes more intelligence than what I have. That's also, there's also a different quality that's being impulsive. And I just, I think there's not a slow deterioration, but like there's things where, I don't know if you followed the Stephen King story where like Stephen King, the author would. He was talking about the price for Twitter was too expensive, right?

Yeah. And then Elon Musk becomes his reply guy where he's like, oh, like let's chat about it. Stephen King ignores him. And then Elon Musk replies a few days later like, hey, I'm still a big fan of you. And like, to me, that was a little bit emblematic where you're dealing with a lot of, you deal with so many emotions and takes if you're just online on any message board or Twitter included all the time. And then instead of thinking, maybe instead of thinking about running your multiple companies,

you're dealing with, I don't know if you've experienced this, but the intense disappointment of finding out that someone you're a big fan of just doesn't like you. Totally, totally. And I think what when I think about the way the internet affects all of us, perhaps for the worst, it's this idea that, you know, most people, whether they're as famous as Elon Musk or just like a normal person using Instagram or whatever, what you post online is for a distinct audience. You know, maybe you're posting vacation pictures so your mom can see them. Maybe you're posting vacation pictures to make some frenemy you have jealous. But, you know, you put stuff online because you want a certain group of people to know.

something about you receive a certain way. And the problem with the internet is that it reaches all these other audiences that feel all these other ways about it. You know, you have your friends who are like, ah, that vacation seems too expensive. Like, screw that guy. And with Musk, what's weird about him is at this point, you know, with his sort of culture war stuff and like his fight against wokeism and all of the gathered grievances that he has, I, A, I don't understand what audience he's speaking to at this point, whether he's getting a lot of feedback that he really likes from conservative, or what, but also he's reaching all these people who he's angering, and then he's, like, fighting with them in his head. And I think anybody has had the experience where all of a sudden

your ability to think through a problem or decide your own opinion about something, the Internet's there in a way that it doesn't need to be and shouldn't be. I think he, the size of the portal with which the Internet gets into his brain and the intensity of that, I think a very well-adjusted person would have a hard time with it. I don't think anyone who spends that much time on social media comes out better adjusted than they were when they started. I think it's of all the technologies we maybe should have had more questions about. I think social media would have been a big one. As we wrap up, I say this with complimentary, but you like reading a lot of weird and interesting

stuff. Yeah. Any book wrecks that you want to plug? Something you've read lately that's been interesting to you. Oh my God. Actually, I know I have at least one recommendation. I mean, this was like, it's not obscure. But Rachel Aviv, the New Yorker writer, wrote a book late last year called Strangers to

Ourselves. That is just the best thing I've read in a really, really, really long time. It's she's writing about mental illness. And she sort of is studying five different people who had severe mental illness. But the cases aren't that, it's not like Oliver Sacks. They're not bizarre sort of bordering on something that feels like science fiction. They're just these case studies that, will make you think, however you feel about medication, they will confound you.

However you feel about therapy, they'll confound you. And even sort of how you categorize somebody who's suffering just because something happened or because of the culture they're in versus someone who has a pathology that should be labeled as one, it was really, it was really like I read it in one sitting. I found it tremendously good. I think it's really good. Nice. That's PJ Vote.

He's got a show coming up called Weekly. you can find his current podcast. It's called Crypto Island. Highly recommend it and always appreciate your time, PJ. Ricky, thank you so much for having me. Just a reminder that the market is closed on Monday for the President's Day holiday, so we will be back on Tuesday. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on Tuesday.