The Daily Zeitgeist - The Normalization Of AI (with Dr Kerry McInerney) 04.29.25

Starting point is 00:00:00 I was listening to a weird out song today where he named drops Kanye. He does. Hmm. Which song? Yeah. Tacky because I'm tacky, but it's not. It's just a famous. It's just going through that whole weird out catalog.

Starting point is 00:00:22 Huh? My kids were like, is on the way to school today, we're like, is weird Al still alive? Weird Al still alive. Shit. He's, I have a, oh, I should say, I have a picture with him. He's but a baby. He's also Kermit vibes. Oh, big Kermit vibes.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Yeah. Damn. I guess 60, he's 65. And weird Al man. Beautiful. Still got 60. He's 65. Looking weird out, man. Beautiful. Still got it though. Tacky. Tacky.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Where is he at now? Does he have like a not like us one yet? He has been quiet. And I, you know. Where is he with the Kendrick and Drake beef? Did he do a meet the grams? He actually did euphoria. Yeah, I'm looking here.

Starting point is 00:01:09 If he did peekaboo, that would be fucking amazing. What are they talking about? They're not talking about anything. What are they talking about? They're not talking about anything. Peekaboo. I just freaked out a three month old. Peekaboo. out of three-month-old peekaboo. It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70 Show castmate Topher Grace stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like,

Starting point is 00:01:46 what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama.

Starting point is 00:02:03 To whom much is given much is expected The guilt comes from am I doing enough me Michelle Obama to say that to a therapist So let's unpack that having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country in the world I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The biggest stars in country music will be taking the stage at our 2025 iHeart Country Festival,

Starting point is 00:02:35 presented by Capital One. Ladies and gentlemen. Brooks and Dunn. Thomas Rhett. Rascal Flatts. Cole Swindell. Sam Hunt. Megan Moroney. Thomas Rhett. Rascal Flatts. Cole Swindell. Sam Hunt. Megan Moroney.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Bailey Zimmerman. Nate Smith. Special guest Dasha. Stream only on Hulu. Saturday, May 3rd. Starting at 8pm Eastern, 5 Pacific. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos.

Starting point is 00:03:07 It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello the internet and welcome to season 386, episode two of Today Leads I, Guys!

Starting point is 00:03:37 Yeah! This is a production of iHeartRadio. It's a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness, it's Tuesday April 29th 25 yeah We're almost April it's national zipper day shut up zippers Shut up just fascinating just just zipping up. You know what I mean? Shut up the national It's the peace rose day national peace rose day

Starting point is 00:04:05 I mean, shout out the national, it's the Peace Rose Day, National Peace Rose Day, which is name of a famous rose that a French horticulturalist had sent out before the invasion of France by the Nazis to try and preserve his unique rose. And we call it the Peace Rose here in America and also it's national in terms of maintaining peace. Yeah. He sent the roses to the Nazis and was like, hey, we're back peace. No, so he was in France and he's like, I guess the sort of anecdote goes is because the invasion was imminent, he sent cuttings to people in Italy, Turkey, Germany, somehow. At that point, it's like Germany and the US to be like, hold on to these, hold on to these. And yeah, it ended up being, I think, given out at like one of the first meetings with the UN and it's also, but all that to say the most important thing is

Starting point is 00:04:51 national shrimp scampi day. So let's get locked in. Yeah. Shout out to the letters YKK on your zipper, by the way. Yeah. Very famous. I mean, we might have to be, that's a Japanese group. Japanese zipper or YKKs.

Starting point is 00:05:07 Oh, yeah. Sorry, tariffs. You know what I mean? Our zipper game about to get fucked up. That's like the goaded zipper too. Like we don't look at it. I only wear pants that have USA on the zipper. And those ones, and they always get snuck.

Starting point is 00:05:20 They always burst. Yeah, they break. The most inopportune times. Yeah. Oh man, I can't believe we're almost through April. You know? Jesus. I'm going to be the guy who keeps blaming the year.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Be like, ah, April, 2025, bad one. Can't wait. May, things are looking up because it's the new month. May the fourth be with us. Yeah. All right. My name is Jack O'Brien, AK. Golf till you're dead.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Golf, golf, till you dead. Balls will roll, balls will roll, balls will roll on the green. That one, Curse of Sparkles on the Discord, who said when Joel Monique said Trump can golf till he's dead, that song just started playing in my mind and I couldn't get it out. That is, by the way, not a threat. That is just an invitation for him to have a lot of fun

Starting point is 00:06:07 golfing for the rest of his long, healthy life. He can golf till he's dead because he's so powerful. The Nia Archives remix of that song is really good. Yeah, I do really want a little drum and bass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The YYs, not the YKKs. Miles, I'm thrilled to be joined by you, my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Thank you so much for having me.

Starting point is 00:06:32 It's Miles Gray, the Lord of Lakersham, AKA the Shogun with no gun, experimental, Black and Neese visual artist, your boy, Kusama. Shout out to those. It was Japanese American or Japanese Heritage night at Dodger Stadium last night. So, you know, I was very excited about that. Also, because there was there's unique merch that I'm trying to get my hands on. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? So should I go into the game?

Starting point is 00:06:57 No, no, no. I did not make it to the game because Her Majesty surprised me with tickets to see the Cowboy Carter tour. Wow. So I was not able to go. Not that I even had tickets to the Dodger game, but yeah. Yeah. Did that. Did that and we will get your review tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:07:15 We'll get your review later on the trending episode. There's an embargo. Yeah, there's a press embargo. Yeah. I didn't want that coming through. Miles, we're thrilled to be joined once again in our third seat by a research associate at the Leverholm Center for the Future of Intelligence, where she researches AI from the perspective of gender studies.

Starting point is 00:07:35 She's the co-host of the great podcast, Good Robot. Please welcome back the brilliant Dr. Carrie McInerney. Dr. Carrie. Hi, thanks so much for having me back. Oh, of course. Thank you for accepting our offer to return, to class up the joint, as I say. It's a great time.

Starting point is 00:07:52 International diplomacy going on. We had to work it out, but we're thrilled to have you back. How have you been? I mean, how have we all been? We don't really know how to answer that question anymore. So I'm always like, um, I guess in the big scheme of things, I'm personally doing really well. But yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Thriving. Yeah. Yeah. What's the energy like? That's the answer. What's the energy like in Europe looking at the cesspit that is a flame as known as the United States? Is it like a, is it like I experienced going to Europe? We're like, what the fuck are y'all doing over there? Or is it like how we felt after Brexit?

Starting point is 00:08:34 People were like, oh, they're fucking themselves bad. I feel like a lot of confusion and fear. I don't know if it's necessarily even just anger as much as it's just people being like, what is happening? What are you doing? But I think there is a degree of shell shock to it where just so much keeps happening that I think you start to become slightly numb, which is very bad, but also very understandable. I got a bit of a refresh from that because I was back home in New Zealand in March and

Starting point is 00:09:01 there's nothing quite like being in a country where you watch the news every day and nothing happens. It's like a tree fell near the motorway, not even on the motorway or that level of news. I don't know, it came back here and I was like, oh my goodness, what is happening? I was like, this is a very different level of news. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we're not getting numb to it, unfortunately. Every day. It just hurts every day, god damn, what the fuck? You got anything for that?

Starting point is 00:09:27 Hurts every day. Yeah. I mean, but that is the point, I think. They want as many people to turn off and sort of ignore what's happening. But I think as things ramp up here, people more and more realize how much the norms, as flawed as they were, were things that were worth keeping and trying to improve, rather than being like, fuck everything, get rid of it all, and whatever this is.

Starting point is 00:09:50 Yeah. All right. Well, we are going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, just a preview of some of the things we're talking about. First of all, we just want to get your expert opinion on where, where are we at generally with AI, with AI, with AI. Like is. A1 it's actually called A1 Jack. A1. Like Linda McMahon would say.

Starting point is 00:10:12 Yeah. Are there cool things happening? Is it, uh, we seem to see a lot of bad ones happening in the United States. We want to talk about this, uh, this signal chat that's been powering the right word shift in tech, uh, powered by Mark Andreessen seems, it seems like a cool guy. So the person whose name that I feel like now I have to learn after reading about this, we're going to see how Trump wants to use AI. We're going to talk about using AI AI large language models to entrap people online,

Starting point is 00:10:46 people who have signed over their likenesses, and now not so psyched about that decision, all of that, plenty more. But before we get to that, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Oh, well, I mean, I guess, do you know the singer Lorde? I'm a very big fan. She's just had a new single out for the first time in like four years and she goes like very underground and just like suddenly pops up again and so I'm very excited for what is hopefully going to be Lorde Summer.

Starting point is 00:11:16 And yeah, I've been following the single, following the kind of weird sort of, I don't know if you saw her botched kind of mini New York spontaneous concert that immediately got canceled because she didn't have a permit, was following that. Yeah, I'm just excited for whatever happens next. Hopefully an album, hopefully not more botched concerts. I was actually talking about Lorde this morning to my children because we were listening to the Weird Al song Foil on the drive to school.

Starting point is 00:11:43 About Royals? Yeah, which is Royals and it's just about tin foil. And they were like, what was this song about originally? I was like, well, there's this really great artist named Lord that you should have probably learned about before you heard this song. But anyways, didn't have a ton of time to dig into it, but I'm glad you're excited. I'm on the Weird Al watch to see what he's going to be driving. He's, he's given us an even longer desert to walk through, but you go.

Starting point is 00:12:12 Oh yeah. Sorry. I was curious. Like I was, I saw somebody post on blue sky, some kind of meme about how Lord fans are experiencing like this third album and comparing it to another artist is like what, how do you, like it felt like were people really split on the second album and are now looking for the third like what's as a Lord fan how do you look at her discography right now and what do you hope like can you just help me understand what I like

Starting point is 00:12:34 what people are talking about with this new like Lord album? Yeah I mean pretty close to her third album was like very divisive and so it kind of came out and it was then like sort of 2021 so it's like just after the pandemic and it was super kind of like breezy, summery. Like it was really different to everything she'd put out previously. And so I think people felt pretty split on it. Whereas her second album, which is also my personal favorite melodrama, was this kind of like buzzy, poppy, kind of intense sort of dance-ish album. And it sounds like she's going back to like that kind of sound again. And so I think people are just like very excited excited, especially post-CharlieXCX.

Starting point is 00:13:08 They want to hear her do this sound again. Got it. So they did the thing where it's like, you're not doing the thing that we liked you from the first album. And yeah, OK, this makes sense. I kind of like that she does different stuff, but also people are excited. That always helps me discover other genres when an artist I really like started tinkering with something else and before I would be a little bit rigid about it and be like, I don't, I didn't sign up for this, but then you're like, well, I like you as an artist, so thank you for opening

Starting point is 00:13:36 my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Kid A was hard for you, huh? Kid A was, oh my God, yeah, absolutely. I was just, I was absolutely spun by that one. It was not expected. You said some things that can't be taken back. I did, I did. I want everything to be the Benz. Or actually, no, Pablo Honey, for being honest.

Starting point is 00:13:54 Yeah. The first one, the only bad one. The, well, how did you experience the Charlie XCX thing? Because that was an interesting song. So they had like a song, Charlie XCX thing? Because that, that was an interesting song. So they had like a song, Charlie XCX had a song with Lord where they talked about. It was like a very honest song. They were like, yeah, I kind of like hated you a little bit, like, but not really. But like, I didn't know what you were going through.

Starting point is 00:14:21 Oh, they were beefing? No, no. It was like a song where like they No, it was like a song where it was just talking about them hanging out and them being just like a weird celebrity friendship type thing. I don't know. Were you a fan, Carrie? I loved it. Yeah. I really loved like Bratt in general, even though I'm the least Bratt person in the world, because I'd listen to all her party music and go to bed at like nine 30.

Starting point is 00:14:46 So I was like, I don't think I was the target audience. But yeah, I thought it was great. There's a sprit of bread in at four o'clock. So I can't have time to wind down before eight 30. The 5pm dinner prep with brat. But yeah, no, I love that. You know, all those kinds of like slightly awkward, ambivalent relationships.

Starting point is 00:15:02 You know, I thought they captured that really brilliantly. Yeah. Awesome. What is something you think is underrated? Super honest, bath bags on planes. Cause like on these like European super cheap flights, they don't seem to do them anymore. Cause I found that out unfortunately last December by just barfing on the plane

Starting point is 00:15:20 because I could not find a bath bag. And I would not recommend that. So bring your own bag is that first tip to people traveling to Europe. A second, you know, any airlines out there, they must be so cheap, please bring them back. So yeah, I don't know when that happened. I feel like they always used to have, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:36 that like sad little baggie in the back seat for this exact scenario. And I feel like I never used them back then. And now I just had to like have my seven year old throw up into my hands on a plane because we couldn't find it in time. Like, this happened to you as well. Yeah, like within the past two weeks. And you weren't flying easy jet or Ryanair? No, we were not.

Starting point is 00:16:01 And we were flying Asiana and we had made it through a whole flight that was like pretty bumpy and got back onto the tarmac and something about the way it was like kind of bouncing a little bit. And he was just like, uh-oh. And we did not have a lot of time. I'm not looking forward to inevitably when I have, because like, I feel like that's a thing

Starting point is 00:16:23 every parent has to do is to buy hand receive that offering from your child. Like I remember doing that with my mom and I was wearing overall, I have such a vivid memory, I was wearing overalls and my mom just put it into that front pocket of my overalls. She's like caught and was like, there you go, just put that in your overall pocket because mommy did not drive this far

Starting point is 00:16:43 to buy something for us to leave now. So I've never felt more helpless than walking up to the flight attendant with a handful of help. You have something I could put this in. Jesus. When, when did you get, because I don't really get a lot of motion sickness, but I, I feel like flights are generally pretty steady, and then there's the quick turbulence.

Starting point is 00:17:10 But motion sickness, for me, has always happened when it's a slow, I don't know, it's sort of slowly attacking your equilibrium. When did you have your onset? Oh, gosh. I mean, I feel like I'm quite prone to motion sickness anyway, but it was one of those like, you know, planes where it's like you get into the air, the plane's immediate, just like shaking, like you're shaking one of those toys. And then like 10 minutes later, they're like, there seems to be some turbulence. Like we know, don't worry, we got that.

Starting point is 00:17:41 We're not getting out of our seats. So I think it was just a bit of a rocky ride, but also it had like one of those giant like American style, even they give you like a liter of coffee right before I went on. So it was also self-induced in some way. I was already, I was too primed for that to happen, but you know, jet two holidays

Starting point is 00:18:00 or whatever in budget airline we were flying, you know, bring back the bag. Right. Had nothing to do with the air conditions of the plane. They're like, yeah, sorry, the plane just does that. The plane just takes the bags out itself. It shakes you and then they ask you, you have to pay $25 for barf bags. It's an add-on. Anecdotally, some people are saying it's because flights,

Starting point is 00:18:28 because the airplane technology allows for smoother flights, people are just getting less sick in numbers. So then maybe they're dialing it back. But I don't think... But even if the 99.9% don't do it, I'm like, when the 0.01% do it, it's real bad. Everyone else are like, I don't mind them having a bag. Cause I'd rather not have to see someone be like, excuse me. This, can you take this?

Starting point is 00:18:55 Hey, could you pass this up to the flight attendant? I know we're not supposed to be getting out of our seat, but what is something that you think is overrated? Actually another plane related one, but no barf this time. to be getting out of our seat. What is something that you think is overrated? Actually, another plane related one, but no barf this time. I saw Emilia Perez, the movie on the plane. I did finish it, but the whole time I was like, how did this get 13 Oscar nominations? I'm sorry for big fans, but I was just like, genuinely, I'm quite impressed it got that many because I was like, this is just not, regardless of what you think about the politics and everything.

Starting point is 00:19:27 I'm like even just with all of that stripped out and all the drama around it, I was like, this is just a bad musical. I really find it quite interesting. So I was like, well, kudos to them for managing to clearly run like a really. It's a terrible movie that did so well. You know what? I respect the game there because you somehow got this thing straight to the top. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I'm, I'm efficient with my movie watching. I only watch whatever will win best picture of the year before it happens. And I did it this year again, you know, only saw Nora.

Starting point is 00:19:54 No need to do anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also saw that on the plane. So that was great. But I had to hold my headphone into the headphone jack for the whole two plus hours of the film.

Starting point is 00:20:04 And I still, I also saw that on the plane and thought that was great. But I had to hold my headphone into the headphone jack for the whole two plus hours of the film. And despite that, I still really enjoyed it. So Nora was, yeah, that was worth it. Damn, these budget airlines are fucking, no barf bags. You got to hold the fucking cable to the headphones in the jack to be able to hear it. I used to have to do that with my headphones on my phone.

Starting point is 00:20:24 Like back when like all headphones were wired and like there was like something going on with my port and so I had to just always like have it like handheld. Oh man remember when airplanes used to have the little just plastic tubing where the sound came through the plastic tubes into your ears before like the digital like three and a half millimeter cables. Oh, that was the era. I just remember the highest fidelity sound. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:51 I always remember stealing it and like trying to like drink stuff with it. Cause it was just like a big tube with like foam ear tips. Then it was like one step above just having a giant horn that you stuck in your ear. Yeah. Like held up. I remember being a kid and bringing the arm rest up and dialing the volume up and just resting my ear on the two little holes where the sound came out.

Starting point is 00:21:10 Wait, really? I didn't even know that's how it worked. Like a dumb part of me assumed that's how it worked, but the little tubes, I assumed it was like the left one. Yeah, no, it was just a plastic tube that the sound cabled through. And here we are talking tech with Dr. McInerney here. I will say, Miles, you should probably start advertising yourself as like, you

Starting point is 00:21:31 need to sign the same PR agent as that octopus who like predicted who would win the world cup three times in a row because you only watch the- Whenever I stumble upon the- Yeah, whatever you stumble upon. They're like, what did he see? I have to read the vibes. And if too many older people are like, this is the movie of the year. I go, no, it ain't no, it ain't.

Starting point is 00:21:52 And because of that, I will not watch it. I think it, I think it would have won if they hadn't had the backlash because it had that same green book crash thing. Oh, right. I like by liking it, I'm an evolved person. Yeah. It's like a very complex issue, and then a movie written by somebody who has given 10 minutes of thought to it and written a script, and then they put a bunch of good filmmaking work against that.

Starting point is 00:22:27 Although this one, I agree, the music in the musical was not outstanding. Shame that. A shame that. A shame that. It was daring. Ah, they love a fucking daring movie. All right. Well, it's wonderful to have you back. We're gonna take a quick break.

Starting point is 00:22:47 And when we come back, we are gonna talk about technology beyond the little tube headphones that used to plug it directly into your airplane seat armrest. We will be right back. It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70's Show castmate Topher Grace stops by the Speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times.

Starting point is 00:23:21 We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.

Starting point is 00:23:38 That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out.

Starting point is 00:23:58 It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless D***less Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. You get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.

Starting point is 00:24:18 Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

Starting point is 00:24:39 This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On November 5th, 2018, at 6.33 a.m.,

Starting point is 00:25:13 a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found. Except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were ten vile... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Starting point is 00:25:41 grotesque... Oh my God. Oh my god. Horrific stories. That to this day have been kept restricted from the public. Until now. No! Don't touch me! You feeling this too?

Starting point is 00:26:00 A horror anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. And we, on this podcast, we ask the hard hitting questions such as where are we at with AI?

Starting point is 00:26:23 Just generally. Just like generally what's the vibes, Dr. McNerney? I remember when we first had you on, we were in the midst of AI, E-I, Andale, Andale, Mommy, E-I, E-I, AI researchers, giving us the warning, they're like, this could be the next, it's going to end the world.

Starting point is 00:26:44 I'm taking cyanide now to preemptively Yeah, excuse myself from this apocalypse. And after a while, I think that's, as we started to speak to more and more experts, we all became rightly unconvinced by its capabilities and like, oh, it's a fancy computer program. That's like a toy basically, but they're saying you can do so much more.

Starting point is 00:27:03 Then we see more and more articles about how people using AI are like fucking up in like legal proceedings, like the MyPillow guy, his lawyers use chat GPT recently, and the judge is like, there are like 30 critical errors in your response here. Like, I don't even know what this is. But now I'm like, are we now sort of, I think because we're sort of of past the thing of like this is that world ender game changer, but still these companies have to make the line go up. Are we like now seeing more of a strategy to just kind of normalize AI use to get people to slowly warm up to it, then sort of like the big explosive sort of debut with like chat GPT and things that we saw. Because I feel like now I hear more people talk about AI when they are like Miyazaki-fying themselves or getting a recipe recommendation rather than like,

Starting point is 00:27:52 this is going to replace the entire medical field. Yeah. I mean, I think normalization is the exact right word. I was just thinking of this today as I went on to Google search. Of course, they now have that AI overview summary. Yeah. Even someone like me who- My friend. Yeah, my friend. You're talking about my friend Gemini?

Starting point is 00:28:08 Yeah. We're pretty tight actually, so careful. Gemini is there providing us some answers. Even things like that, I think people like me who say probably wouldn't have gone to chat GPT just to do basic information searches, I have to admit I do read the AI summaries quite a lot. I think that it's a way of just making it really frictionless and really easy to immediately use an AI tool.

Starting point is 00:28:32 I think we see that with a lot of AI rollout. On the one hand, I'm not completely against the use of these AI tools if you're really finding it useful and if it's reliable, you're getting the full picture behind the tool and what it's for. But on the other hand, I think something I do worry about is something that I think has to be integrated into all our ethical tech use, is a meaningful sense of the opt-out or a meaningful sense of the opt-in. Do I have the right and the ability to say,

Starting point is 00:28:58 no, I don't want to use this? Am I being actively consulted and being able to consent to using particular tools or programs and so on and so forth? I think the current rollout of AI tools is not really complying with that particularly well. Right. Yeah, they're just excited. They have a new toy that they want to use,

Starting point is 00:29:19 that they're going to make a Super Bowl commercial about. It's the Gouda cheese, the most consistent. What was it? Gouda cheese? Did you see that, Dr. McEnroe? That Google advertised their AI product with a Super Bowl ad that had incorrect information in it. The premise was this is a cheese farmer and he is a whiz when it comes to making good

Starting point is 00:29:41 cheese, but he's all thumbs when it comes to writing marketing material. And so it showed Google AI telling him facts that he could put on his cheese. And one of the facts was that Gouda cheese is the most popular type of cheese and is responsible for 60% of the world's cheese sales. Which is just like on its surface, like obviously wrong and they still like put it in a, in a Superbowl commercial, like somebody caught it once the ad had like been up and so it didn't make it to the Superbowl, but it made it like online and was viewed millions of times.

Starting point is 00:30:19 And it's just that seems to be like, it's if, if it's not going to be 100% if it's not going to be right, a it's not going to be right 100% of the time, it's kind of useless because it's just like that. I mean, yeah, we, I, I feel like everybody should be like would be opting out of it if they knew like, and just so you know, like one out of like every, I don't know, 20 of the things that you search is going to be like blatantly wrong in a way that is going to be humiliating to you. Yeah. And yet we're not going to tell you which one enjoy the product. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:53 I mean, first, I love the idea that it's not even an error, but it's just big gouda is out there trying to spread some misinformation about the popularity of Gouda cheese, but second, like, yeah, I feel like one way I've heard people describe it as this idea of like, yeah, I feel like one way I've heard people describe it is this idea of like, yeah, something like chat GPT or the AI overview can be useful for getting like a sense of a topic. But yeah, I guess the issue for me is like that often requires quite a lot of expertise to be able to know whether something is right or not. And so, for example, like my husband is from North Carolina, he's a basketball fan, like I am sort of forcibly inducted into the NBA enough that, yeah, I could probably tell that 80% maybe actually that might be overestimating my knowledge.

Starting point is 00:31:30 But yeah, that 20% would be totally out of my, my knowledge. And so I think that's my fear is if you're relying on these tools, it's not that people can't tell that something's wrong. But you know, that when we're using it for like a really wide range of applications, that does actually require a lot of expertise in all those different things. I think certainly speaking for myself, that's not something I would be able to do or to discern. Yeah, because I mean, sure,

Starting point is 00:31:54 you think of it like, well, if I got to be on my test, but if you're asking something to explain the Civil War and you get all the generals and the battles and dates right, but the reason for the American Civil War wrong where it's like, and they all fought over economic rights. And then now it doesn't matter that 80% is completely negated by this other piece of information that has completely colored the description of something. That's why I'm like, even every time I see those summaries, I'm like, no.

Starting point is 00:32:24 I'll click on the links that are saying, like, even every time I see those summaries, I'm like, no, like, I'll click on the links that are saying like, we're using these to tell us. And I look at them, like, this is not really even exactly what's happening here to the point that I feel like it's causing more harm than good, because I've at least learned to try and just research myself. You know, that's how I got my theories on the earth shape and things like that. My own research. Miles has some interesting ideas on that. I don't know if you have a couple hours, Dr. McInerney. Well, every time I've emailed Dr. Carey,

Starting point is 00:32:51 she's respectfully declined to entertain the conversation, which I understand she has a lot going on. I mean, she can be a useful source to you though. You're looking for somebody who's been in an airplane. Look down. Are there cool uses of AI that aren't getting attention or I guess even like tech breakthroughs that, you know, we asked this the last time you were on, but like, we're still in the early stages of AI.

Starting point is 00:33:18 Are there directions that have like popped out to you that, you know, the future of technology and this technology in particular could take that are promising for the bettering of the world for more than 12 rich guys, which I feel like is the current model. It's like these 12 guys are like, yeah, this would be amazing if we could replace all the people. Did you see me with Totoro? I was with Totoro from the Miyazaki movie. But where are you seeing hope?

Starting point is 00:33:49 Where are you seeing hope, I guess? I'm genuinely terrified. I'm going to say something and you'll be like, that's the exact same answer you said two years ago and destroy any remaining hope. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm always quite excited by more creative uses of AI or people who are like really trying to think about like, instead of saying like, how can we make like one product that works for the whole world, like which tends to be the approach

Starting point is 00:34:13 of things like chat GPT and then like spray. They obviously don't work for the whole world and all these different cultural contexts and all these different linguistic contexts because I don't think a single product can. But you know, I do think like there are really interesting examples of groups like Tehiku Media in New Zealand, where I'm from, which have been like using AI and machine learning techniques to try and focus on the Torea Maori or the indigenous language of New Zealand's language preservation. And so because of like long histories of kind of the state suppression of Torea Maori, there

Starting point is 00:34:42 was like a period where like there weren't that that many native Torreo Maudi speakers, or it was like really aggressively suppressed. And now as a result, people are kind of trying to really reinvest and support the kind of revitalization of Torreo Maudi and Peter Lucas Jones, who's this CEO, I believe of TIKU Media and like their whole team have been really intentional and sort of really world leading, I think,

Starting point is 00:35:03 in how they've been trying to use AI machine learning for this. I think a big part of their project, though, is that they're very insistent on indigenous data sovereignty or making sure that their platforms aren't sold to Big Tech or reliant on Big Tech. And I imagine that's a really challenging project, because this sort of small handful of Big Tech firms

Starting point is 00:35:23 are incredibly dominant in this space. But a lot of that has been around like, no, we really wanna make sure that this remains technology by and for multi people and for our organization. And so I think projects like that, I find really, really inspiring and really important. But I think there was just a great example

Starting point is 00:35:40 of AI development being done super well, which is like you have a clear problem and you have clear ideas and ways that you think that AI machine learning can help us address in part some of this problem without like positioning it as the solution. Because I think if anyone comes out of the gate and is like, AI is going to solve this problem, that's when I think you should always be a bit like, oh, I don't think it is, especially if the problem is something like really, really massive, like discrimination. It's kind of like, well, we just have to reject that one sort of straight out the gate and

Starting point is 00:36:09 kind of think a bit more specifically about this. And I'm sure those companies are like, and when we made that claim, that wasn't actually meant for you to be the receiver of that message. It was for Wall Street and investors when we said this thing will solve everything. Because like, yeah, I mean, like that application feels like the kind of thing that like, you know, in the U S right now, Trump is very focused on eliminating any semblance of equity or diversity inclusion, obviously, as we've seen, like the woke DEI initiative, like a crusade against all those things.

Starting point is 00:36:41 And that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that Trump would be like, that's not useful, it just has to be this other thing that's a money making endeavor. Because right now, his people, the people within the administration, like the head of science and technology have said things like Biden's AI policies were like divisive. And it's all been about all been about the redistribution, like redistribution in the name of equity. And naturally, Trump has fired many of the AI experts Biden hired because it was clear, like obviously Biden hired them. He's like, there's a huge bias problem with any of this stuff.

Starting point is 00:37:14 And if it's even going to be a product people use, like that's probably a thing worth tackling, but now like it's become sort of like normalized within this administration to say. This is all harmful now because it's trying to advance equity. When we've spoken to people like you and other experts, it's like, no, you have to get rid of those inequities or else it doesn't even fucking work. When you're talking about things like being able to someone who has a darker complexion, how does a self-automated car even identify that pedestrian

Starting point is 00:37:45 as an object to avoid? Because again, these biases affect all these different systems. But it feels like now, at least from the American conservative side of things, or just generally the tech conservative movement is like, yeah, maybe it's just fine if it misidentifies black people or doing these other things that just kind just show that at the end of the day, it only needs to work in the way that we want it to work and other applications would never be damned. Keeps identifying black people as traffic cones.

Starting point is 00:38:17 Do we think that we need, can we go to market with this still? Or is that, are we good here? That's, yeah. I'm amazed at how, you know, I think how much like objectively, this is a thing. If you want a product to work, it has to be able to A, be used around the world. So how useful is that in a place that doesn't have like an ethnic majority that's all white people, uh, in the same way, like that, you know, again, these

Starting point is 00:38:44 all just feel very counterintuitive, but that seems to be the name of this year's theme generally. Yeah. I mean, the idea of this is the year of counterintuitive things really resonates. Yeah. And I think it's not only disappointing because I do think that it shouldn't be super hard to buy into the idea that AI that is more equitable, less biased, and more fair genuinely is actually in the less biased, and more fair genuinely is actually in the long run good for everyone. Although I know there's a reactionary group that feels like any kind of equity or equality

Starting point is 00:39:12 is impinging on their own share of the pie. But I really think AI ethics and safety is for everyone. But yeah, I also think it's very sad, because this has huge knock-on effects for the rest of the world, because the US is a world leader in AI and tech production. And so yeah, if you have an environment that is kind of saying let's throw ethics out the window, then that does have knock on effects for the rest of the world that buys and uses still a lot of this technology.

Starting point is 00:39:38 So yeah, I think like these rollbacks obviously massively affect the US domestic context, but they certainly don't stop there. Right? Is there any do you see any put like, this is as stupid on its face as it sounds right to be like, we have to we have to stop with these inclusive efforts to address biases within AI like models. There's no like it's as dumb as that sounds right? Because in my mind and everything I've read people like no no like it It works worse when it has all these like inbuilt biases like it will not work as good

Starting point is 00:40:12 Therefore is not viable so it is that is bad right? There's no like secret things like well You know some bias is good for these things I mean if someone if that is if that is the secret source, then please tell me. It's definitely not what I would think. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it just comes down to, again, like I think there's a fundamental irony of saying, like, you know, the power of these AI enabled tools

Starting point is 00:40:34 and products is that, you know, we can perform all of these like massive tasks at scale. And this idea of, again, like a product that can be sold across the world, a product that can be used at scale with the kind of knowledge that this only really works for like a very, very narrow base. I mean, my assumption to be fair, though, is like, I think that a lot of people who

Starting point is 00:40:51 make products that have these kinds of exclusions or biases aren't necessarily going in being like, I know my product is really biased and I actually just like don't care. Like, I don't think that usually is it. I think often to me, it's just this kind of mindset of either we just haven't really thought about it. I think this is particularly common with accessibility, which is that often the accessibility has to be integrated in from the very beginning of the design process. It can't be slapped on at the end.

Starting point is 00:41:16 And too often I think that's how it gets approached. And so people just haven't even begun to think about, you know, oh, like will my language, I mean, sorry, will my model work for disabled people, will my product work for people with these different kinds of, like, physical disabilities? Like, you know, I think it's just that your whole groups of populations just get ignored. Or, you know, maybe they've realized and they think, oh, it's actually a really bad thing that this product doesn't work for this particular group. But I think I'm just going to make the trade off and decide, like, I think that's a small enough consumer base that I can still sell my product and like, I don't think I'll

Starting point is 00:41:46 get too much into pushback. I think it'll be fine. And I think this, you know, might often be the case for populations that are perceived as being like very, very small. So I'm thinking of say, like trans or gender diverse people who often get erased from certain data sets because they're like, oh, well, this is like statistically a very small percentage. And it's like, yeah, but those people's exclusion really, really matters. It has a huge impact on their life if they go through a scanner and their body is not recognized or seen as not normative, or if they're excluded from different databases. These do have huge knock-on effects for people.

Starting point is 00:42:19 So, yeah, I guess I would say that the kinds of people maybe who are not seeing AI ethics as a priority aren't doing it because they're just like, oh, de-biasing, whatever, that's fine. I think it's probably more just to do with a lot of different blinkers, like a certain kind of narrow mindset about who your consumer is and who's actually using these products. Right. Yeah. It does feel probably, but for the Trump administration, I'd say they're probably very much focused on the fact that, because it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:42:47 It's like, I don't know, even if it makes everything unsafe, I just have to say the words, I don't like equity. And that's without any consideration for what that means. And if the whole world breaks, like the better for him to consolidate power, you know? Yeah. Like that feels... Yeah. I mean, did you see the semaphore article about like the group, the Mark Andreessen group chats that like it. So he's been having like these signal chats since the days of the pandemic. And it's like, he has like gone out of his way to bring in all of these tech

Starting point is 00:43:20 leaders and then like fucking super far right wing like people like Richard Hanania, like the guy who's like an outright white supremacist and like put these people in group chats together. Like at one point he like brought in some progressive people and then they wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing laws that were banning critical race theory. And he just like had a meltdown and was like, you betrayed me by writing this thing and like kicked them out of the group chat and like since then

Starting point is 00:43:57 it's just all this like extreme right wing propaganda that's being like kind of vomited back and forth between these people who are like the biggest, most powerful oligarchs and like the people who are in charge of the direction that tech takes. And so I, yeah, I mean, it feels like this whole thing is developing in a way that feels particularly like non-optimal and like stupid and narrow-minded and racist and white supremacist and all those things. And like this was very helpful for context. I just wonder like all of, like we're seeing a model that's being developed

Starting point is 00:44:40 not in the best way possible, it seems like, to say the least. And we're probably going to discount a lot of these possibilities because they're so shitty at what they're doing. But do you see that sort of white supremacist mindset kind of pervading in the tech mainstream? Oh, what a question. I know, sorry. It's a big one. Yeah, no, I mean, I feel like, I guess, like what I do think this gesture's towards

Starting point is 00:45:11 is this like very public repositioning of Silicon Valley, which I think always had this like relatively liberal veneer, even if it's not clear how deep those roots actually went, kind of very explicitly aligning themselves with the right and with Trump. And it's a little bit hard to tell how much of this is political expediency, people saying, well, clearly,

Starting point is 00:45:29 I'm gonna do anything to avoid heavier regulation, we do anything to avoid this kind of punitive regime that Trump is exacting on many different institutions, so we're going to put ourselves in his camp. And how much of this is an expression of deeper ideologies and deeper kind of political beliefs that have maybe sat dormant or sort of have kind of been cultivated within Silicon Valley and tech firms and now are kind of finally bursting onto the scene now that they feel a bit more empowered as there's kind

Starting point is 00:45:58 of been this like global shift towards the right. So yeah, I don't know honestly like how like, how much, you know, we can discern between sort of like the real deep feeling and the kind of political expediency argument. But I think it's just undeniable that you have people like particularly Mark Zuckerberg, who would have been like, normally more kind of center, possibly center left on a lot of issues, even though he was obviously running like a massively exploitative, gigantic, quite dangerous tech company, now really aggressively rebranding as a kind of wooing Trump, but also sort of vying into a lot of these hyper-masculinist tech-bros sort of languages and ideologies

Starting point is 00:46:37 that I don't think certainly five years ago we would have seen him supporting in the same way. So yeah, it feels like there's been this sort of very visible shift in Silicon Valley. But again, as someone who's not based in Silicon Valley, like I probably couldn't tell you like how much that feels like this is, this is actually the real face of the beast versus this is actually just like what people are doing for the moment. Because I mean, you see how much like Andreessen got Silicon Valley money together to get Trump into office,

Starting point is 00:47:04 along with a bunch of other crypto people. It's like $78 million from like the Andreessen side of things. And you know, like these group chats, they do, it's like our modern day smoke filled lounges where you get to see these very powerful people sort of debate these topics and get their takes out there that are like wacky as hell. And that's what I think. Like reading this article, it was a little bit more like, damn,

Starting point is 00:47:30 I mean, I don't know if everybody in this group chat thinks that, but there are definitely some vocal people in this group chat that definitely think they are the ones who are going to solve these very complex issues. But in the most like inelegant, one size fits all kind of way. That's just all about power. And that's when I'm like, oh, I think it's really these are starting to blend together, especially as we see how much how people's like media diets and the

Starting point is 00:47:57 information they receive are informed by what these people who are running these companies, how they believe in like how information should move and how people get siloed into information bubbles and things like that. That's when I started to begin to be like, this feels a little bit more like a smoking gun when you hear like, you know, these ideas are being like, exchanged and knowing that like, there's this guy, Curtis Yarvin that we talked about a few weeks ago, who's like basically like a tech monarchist, who has a lot of ideas that people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel like are really subscribed to. And yeah, and like in these group chats, it's where

Starting point is 00:48:31 these a lot of these very influential people start getting introduced to these kinds of ideas. So that's when I'm like, this feels very sinister at best. when you see this. And then thinking that these are the people that control the levers that just normal people who are using the internet and stuff get affected by their policies. It feels like a little bit like they figured out this is how they exercise their immense control over people in these sort of less sort of not like in the ways that we think in terms of governance or whatever, but through the spread of information and ideas.

Starting point is 00:49:08 Yeah, and I guess I feel the signal chats like raise two things about this kind of like pivot to the right, which I think are both really important. And like, I think the one is what you've pointed out is this like small scale influencing. Like, I think often when we talk about disinformation or misinformation, we're thinking about that in terms of like, oh, someone makes like an AI deep fake and they like release it onto the internet. And somehow that deep fake like convinces like many, many, many people that this event occurred or didn't occur and it has like seismic effects.

Starting point is 00:49:34 And like, you know, again, I don't think that's necessarily how disinformation works. I think that, yeah, these kinds of like small cultivated circles of trust are maybe the things that we should be really, really concerned about, which is like what actually causes people to change their mind or change behaviors. Like maybe these are the levers that can like be significantly more effective. But yeah, the second is kind of a point you were raising and I think does again like

Starting point is 00:49:56 tie into what happens when you build these bonds of trust, which is just like following the money. And like you mentioned, sort of the massive amount of tech funding that got Trump in the office. And I had a colleague who now works at The Guardian, and he and the team kind of just like tracked all the funding behind the Trump and Harris campaigns. And what was just really astounding was just like the extraordinary amount of money that specifically just came from tech. And like that's been a really big change in the last five years or so is just like how much money sort of Silicon Valley has been putting into political lobbying. And so I think, you know, yeah, it's even regardless of like your political

Starting point is 00:50:31 orientation, but like particularly right now with the Trump administration, like, I think that's something we should all be really concerned about. Yeah. I mean, cause it feels like this is the best way in some level, the tech industry is sort is like, well, we're actually now the ones that are really able to manufacture consent through social media and misinformation. You marry that with a presidential administration that would really

Starting point is 00:50:56 benefit from that full court press propaganda making. It feels like everyone wins in their own way. Although there are clearly some people in tech had their regrets after all the tariff chaos and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Starting point is 00:51:14 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no word on Twitter more. That was my whole thing. And now I have no money or less money. But yeah, it, it, it's, it, it feels like it's just like the most. Clown show version of all this, I think, which is also very frustrating to watch or just have to sit idly by as it's all happening to us. Very intentional, very also it's just like, really pathetic. Just like seeing how easy, easily influenced these people are.

Starting point is 00:51:46 I mean, it makes sense because it feels like they're from a church that believes that wherever the most money is equals the right thing. And so you just like get them on a group chat with a billionaire and they're like, well, I mean, that guy must be the smartest guy in the world. And so, right, his ideas I have to listen to. Yeah. And I do think as well, to some extent, I'm like, yeah, to that point, much less interested in what people quote unquote, really think and much more interested in just what they do. And so to some extent, I'm like, yeah, you know,

Starting point is 00:52:19 does it really matter whether Mark Zuckerberg is personally invested in these quite misogynist ideologies about what it means to be a man or does it matter that he has gone on Joe Rogan and now propagates a lot of these ideas and has publicly shifted Mitter to align with or support Trump's administration? That to me is what really matters right now, which is that we have these active shifts of power in the tech industry that go beyond politically signaling in certain ways. They're really, really tangible. I think Musk is the flagship of that in terms of someone who's just been very, very visible in the administration,

Starting point is 00:52:54 but he's certainly not the only one. Yeah, it feels like there's no shortage of these tech billionaires who are dead set on a horrifying ideology. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and keep talking about AI. We'll be right back. It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddie Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70 Show castmate,

Starting point is 00:53:25 Topher Grace stops by the Speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was like such a perfect golden time.

Starting point is 00:53:40 Listen to Dose Amigos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me, and that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me.

Starting point is 00:53:55 I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, me on the iHeart radio app, Apple

Starting point is 00:54:12 podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On November 5th, 2018, at 6.33 AM. A red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found. Except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were ten vile... On that tape were 10 vile, grotesque, horrific stories that to this day have been kept restricted from the public until now. Mike! No question! You feelin' this too? A horror anthology podcast.

Starting point is 00:55:10 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published. And he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

Starting point is 00:55:26 I spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my screen, break my ribs, I had my fex all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started.

Starting point is 00:55:58 Rodger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rod. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GoBoy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back. And one of the trends that we've seen is the police and other forces trying to use fake AI personas who are there to get college students to admit that they haven't like signed the national pledge to support Israel or whatever. And, you know, or try and radicalize people or, you know, all the, all the

Starting point is 00:56:51 entrapment and shit that we were seeing, like as early as like the odds with like nine 11 and the quote unquote war on terror. But first of all, I'm just curious. Like it seems like the sort of thing that would be hard to get fooled by. But the internet is obviously massive and full of like stupid people. But like, does does this sort of application concern you? Are the are the models, Dr. McInerney, like advanced to a degree that like, you degree that I could get pulled in by a bot that claims to be a college

Starting point is 00:57:30 professor who once has some interesting literature for me to read. Yeah. I mean, I guess for me, I feel like this is how most of these scams work though, right? Is you always think you're never going to get taken in by one until you get taken in by one. And I think they really, you know, they benefit from that kind of sense of confidence, but also just like more broadly from the fact that like, we have to have a degree of trust now, interactions with people to like function societally.

Starting point is 00:57:56 And like, that's what's so damaging about these like, fraudulent or fake uses of AI is like, they really affect that kind of shared trust. Yeah. I get so many, I think I'm like confident off of all the text messages I get that are like, hi, do you want to get lunch? And it's like a new number. I'm just like, well, I know this person's not real.

Starting point is 00:58:15 So once again, 99 and oh, when it comes to telling when a bot is coming for me. But then I did get into a long term relationship with a bot is coming for me. But then I did get into a long-term relationship with a bot. So, but no, uh, yeah. Are there, are there, uh, like strategies for telling whether you're chatting with it, like, is there a Turing tests? Like not, not obviously like specific questions, like in a Blade Runner, but like overall things that they don't deal well with or that like bit bit of misinformation you hear when you're a young kid and you're like, you know, when a cop, you got to ask them if they're a cop and they got to

Starting point is 00:58:50 tell you right there, you know, or else it's, or else it's a trap and be like, you're, you're not an AI, right? I mean, is, is it that easy? Is there a silver bullet? Oh, that's a good question. Um, cause yeah, I mean, I do think like part of the interesting thing, I think about a lot of scams, or this is something that my colleague, the philosopher Claire Venn says, she's like, often they're not intending to try and make their contact the most believable with you.

Starting point is 00:59:14 Like when you get these mass spam emails, I think this happens to most of us as we look at something we're like, that's obviously spam. And my colleague Claire says, it's like, well, it's because like, they don't want to be getting a huge pool of people who are like, not actually that easily fooled getting bought in to the first step, because like, these people are not going to go all the way, like, they want the people who they think will go all the way with them and hand over money or like, who will like, even not feel confident enough to challenge what's happening, or they'll be really like, bought into what's happening. But you know, yeah, like the kind of core of like,

Starting point is 00:59:44 the scamming is not necessarily saying like, oh, it's about crafting the perfect email to get people through the door. It's about like, no, who can we actually take to the end? And I think like, yeah, a lot of these AI chatbots, it's like, we might look at this and say, okay, well, this seems really sketchy. But like, they just need to get enough people who are like, oh, okay, but actually, like a lot of the interfaces I use online are like, not super great, or like, you know, I might not find them very intuitive and like, oh, this is kind of a scary thing that I've been suggested to do, or like, they've made a thread about like my money or something like that. So I've got to now like, stay engaged in this conversation. And you know, so I think like, to some extent, like there is like a

Starting point is 01:00:21 particular exploitation of vulnerability that happens in this in these scams. But yeah, in terms of like a Turing test for these chatbots, I don't know, because I feel like also, yeah, like, I feel like people are often like, oh, like, I can totally tell when I'm chatting to a chatbot. And I'm like, I don't know if I always can. I think, you know, it is, it can be like, especially with something like chat GPT, like, you know, I know, with people say, anecdotally have talked about, say, trying to discern whether like chat GPT has been used to write essays, like that's more common in the context that I'm in higher education.

Starting point is 01:00:53 And like, sometimes they can get like really clear, like, really clear keywords, or they say, okay, like they people keep using a phrase that is like not super normal to use in this discipline, but like probably is quite normal if you use AI. So they might have keywords like that. You might have really obvious tells that they've kept the prompt in, like, okay, please write me an essay about AI. So that's kind of okay. Here is your essay you requested on the following prompt.

Starting point is 01:01:18 But yeah, I think to some extent, I do worry a little bit if people are like, no, I completely believe that I am like scam proof when it comes to AI, because I'm like, I do think, you know, compared to like five years ago, like we do just have like much more sophisticated voice cloning technologies, language models, and so on and so forth, that might make it a little bit harder to discern in that kind of like initial first pass. But this is just like my instinctive thoughts. And like maybe there's actually, yeah,

Starting point is 01:01:46 the version of a cop has to tell you a cop for AI. Yeah, I mean, if you're asking my opinion, Jack, I think it's great that the cops are using AI to entrap people online. I think I'm not concerned. I think it's great. Yeah, I was just looking for a yay or nay, guys. Yeah, that we're your pro.

Starting point is 01:02:00 Yeah, as long as, whatever makes the cops' jobs easier, I'm all for that. I back the blue. But that is too much over time. No, I mean, but that is interesting, Dr. Kerry to consider, like, I didn't think about how it's like, you need it to be shit. So you put off the people that are going to be smart enough by the time it comes to the part where you ask money, because if they're already in at the most wacky version of like, Carol, when are we going to play golf this weekend?

Starting point is 01:02:28 And they're like, huh? I'm not Carol. Oh, well, while I have you. And they're like, exactly. That's the most interesting investment opportunity. Right. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 01:02:38 Right. Right. Completely. Carol's golf buddy. Who's Carol? I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:02:43 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the images are the concerning place. Like it just the degree to which AI has made Photoshop really, really easy. Like there's just, I don't know, it's degraded the degree to it. Like there was just a story over the weekend where a lot of people were fooled by AI, created mugshots of the judge that the Trump administration arrested, and making it look like she's weeping as she's being arrested.

Starting point is 01:03:15 But I just feel like there's just no way to believe any image that you see. You just need to keep Googling, ask whether it is AI or not. And then of course, you're asking Google's AI whether it's AI or not. And they're probably in on it too. But what would you say, what are the uses that you feel like are most concerning that you're kind of keeping an eye on that you see evolving the fastest? I mean, I think what you've actually pointed out to me is the thing that I get the most worried about personally, which is less the production of

Starting point is 01:03:50 individuals pieces of media like video, deep fakes or photographs, even though those can be really, really scary and quite concerning when you see them made. For me, it's like that broader point you said of, I don't really know what I can trust. I think the creation of deep fakes in and of themselves, like, you know, they undermine sort of our like broader trust in our information

Starting point is 01:04:09 environment and like this is happening at a time when our information environment is already very chaotic and quite hostile. And so like, yeah, I really feel in particular, I mean, I feel for all of us, but I really feel for young people kind of growing up in this like very intense, polarized kind of extreme media environment. And I don't think that kind of the possibility of deepfakes, then this sort of this idea that like anything created could be fictitious is going to necessarily help that or help people believe that they can have access to kind of verifiable and true information. So like

Starting point is 01:04:40 to give an example of this, like one example here is this idea of like the liar's dividend, which is like anyone could say something kind of mean or offensive or untrue. And then, you know, when confronted about it, they could say like, oh, that video clip's not true. Like that was a deep fake. Like that's fake news, to use a very common term from US politics. And you know, it could be that actually like 99% of people are like, no, we really think you said that that sounds like you, like we've done all these checks and we think this is real footage. But like you can plant just enough doubt in people's minds, you can plant that 1% where people are like, but what if actually this isn't is a deep fake? Like what if this isn't true?

Starting point is 01:05:19 And I think that's how you kind of get this erosion of sort of the information landscape that makes everything that little bit shakier. Because yeah, again, like I think when it comes to say like the impact of like AI generated misinformation sort of on things like elections, like there was a lot of fear around this last year because last year was kind of had all these democratic elections called like the year of elections and also sort of the emergence of like really, really sophisticated generative AI tools coming out at the same time. And it seems like actually the verdict on that is a little bit mixed and so you know one kind of study looked at this and they said well actually of you know just under 80 pieces of media we looked at of

Starting point is 01:05:59 these AI generated sort of pieces attached to different political campaigns or elections. Half of them weren't necessarily misinformation. Then the other half of them, yes, they were made by AI, but a lot of them really were more like cheap fakes. They were not necessarily actually deeply reliant on AI tools. It could have quite easily been made something like Photoshop, for example. So yeah, AI has made the production of these particular pieces of media, but it's like not necessarily actually like fundamentally changed what we're able to do

Starting point is 01:06:31 necessarily in these particular cases. So yeah, so I think like when it comes to sort of like the cause effect of saying, like, you know, we're going to have these specific pieces of disinformation, they're going to have these specific negative effects. I think, you know, the picture there is maybe not as extreme as some of the media fear around it last year was portraying. But yeah, I think this broader question of how do we know what we can trust, that remains really central. Yeah. I feel like there's this also outside of obviously the geopolitical things that are very front of mind because that's the things that has an effect on a

Starting point is 01:07:04 lot of people. I just see it creeping into so many creative spaces that I'm like, it's cheapening so many things because, like, for example, like Pinterest, if you look for anything around, like architecture right now, I was like looking for something just like in because I'm in the process of hopefully rebuilding my home of like trying to look at architecture pictures. 80% of them are bullshit AI slop images where you're like, Oh, that's an interesting kitchen. You're

Starting point is 01:07:34 like, why is the sink in the wall? Like this? Like, wait, hold on what and I'm like, none of these power cords like line up with where the lamps are. And it just sort of it like gets to the point where like, this, this isn't even real stuff that I can draw inspiration from. Or even on Spotify, there's so much more AI generated music that is also kind of taking shifting people's focus. I also see the way we listen to music is really changing where it's much more passive.

Starting point is 01:08:02 And you're being fed music rather than like seeking music. Like, you know, you used to, you know, you used to go buy a CD, which I don't mind because I love when I discover new music through these kinds of these sort of like algorithmic playlists and things like that. But it's also created like a whole other like genre of music. That's like a fake artist that has like, is just putting up sort of texture, like really uninteresting music to have in the background. There's some really insidious that like word for it. It's like functional music or just something that is like,

Starting point is 01:08:34 is not really meant to listen to, but just on passively. And when I see all that, I'm like, oh, this is, this really also takes away from like the magic of human creativity and just the skills that people build through composition or design or whatever, because everything is being flooded with things that are just kind of based on it, but not having that real sort of sincerity to it. That's another one that I see happening more and more and more. I'm like, oh, this feels like this is going to be a slippery slope too. No, I think it'll be fine. Anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah, it's all a one. It's all a one as Linda. Did you see her say that? I unfortunately am aware of this. Yeah. Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education repeatedly will describe AI as a one.

Starting point is 01:09:25 The Secretary of Education repeatedly will describe AI as A1. Wow. Yeah, it's like as if we weren't just bad enough. Bad all around. She's ready. Yeah, she's like, I mean, with the rise of A1. And you're like, are you not even around people who are saying it out loud? Or do you love people with the worst fucking taste in steak sauce? Right. But that's, that's why I worry though about, you know, the numbness I mentioned at the beginning where I like, when I heard that I was just like, yeah, that

Starting point is 01:09:51 sounds, that sounds like what I would expect at this point, someone out there saying a one and like, no, I should not be like, right in any way have this normalized, but like, I feel like we've hit that stage where there just seems to be this like total disregard for any kind of strategic policy planning or expertise, and instead you get the A1s of the world out there. Yeah. Shout out to my A1s, my day ones. Well, Dr. McNerney, it's been a pleasure having you back on The Daily Zeitgeist. Where can people find you, follow you, hear you, all that good stuff?

Starting point is 01:10:25 Yeah. Well, if you're interested in more conversations around feminism and technology, then I highly recommend you check out my podcast with Dr. Eleanor Driege, the Good Robot Podcast. And yeah, if you're interested in some of the topics of discussion we've been discussing today, a couple of other substacks and channels maybe to shout out is AI Snake Oil. It is really, really great if you're interested in maybe trying to debunk some of the hype around AI, trying to like get the grips of like, okay, what can all these different AI tools do or not do? I think they do a really great job. And I think Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, I always get the name mixed up, but like that's also a good

Starting point is 01:11:02 fun and they have a lot of fun, I think, kind of trying to look through various sort of, you know, slightly sketchy looking AI projects together and sort of, you know, tearing them apart. So would definitely recommend those shows too. Nice. Is there a work of media or social media that you've been enjoying? Oh gosh. I mean, I'm not proud to say this, but I'm actually like writing a book chapter

Starting point is 01:11:24 at the moment on on internet scam culture. So as part of that, I've been going back to the great debacle of Fire Festival. Obviously, I think this is indicative of much bigger societal problems, but the memes that did come out of Fire Festival were unfortunately spectacular. So I have been going back through some of those like, you know, now very matured, like five year old cheese sandwich memes that came out of fire. So that's been my like current social media. Why are we doing that?

Starting point is 01:11:54 Like old albums, like, like, man, remember the memes when Trump got COVID remember the memes when the queen died? Like, like, like, man, the way I was. I just like, forget them. Yeah. And you're just like, they're so, like here, it was like when Liz Truss was kind of, you're really going through it. Like that was just like relentless political memes.

Starting point is 01:12:15 Rishi Sunak, when you had the election. But yeah, you just kind of get swept away. So, you know, maybe that's the new thing, the kind of meme album. I'm ready. I'm ready for a meme album. Miles, where can people find you? Is there work media you've been on? Me? You find me everywhere they have at symbols,

Starting point is 01:12:31 at miles of gray. If you want to hear me sob this week about the state of the Lakers, that's on Miles and Jack up Mad Booski's, our NBA podcast. I mean, whatever. Whatever. It's just fine. We're just going to have to come back from 3-1. You know what I mean? whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. You know, it's just fine. You know, we're just gonna have to come back from three one.

Starting point is 01:12:47 You know what I mean? He's done it before. We've done it before. And that's I guess that's what it calls for. That's what it calls for. Or I will just ignore everything and go full fetal and sob every night. But there's that. And then if you want to hear me talk to 90 day fiance, I do that over at 420 day fiance.

Starting point is 01:13:02 A post I like from blue skies from Eric Columbus at Eric Columbus dot V sky dot social. He quote tweeted a tweet from a reporter. And it's first of all, the quote, the tweet that's being quoted says, because the Canadian elections had just happened, it said one couple at a voting station in Port Credit said

Starting point is 01:13:18 they would rather not speak to American eat American media. They then apologized three times and then they quote tweeted it with saying, uh, peak Canada. Yep. Yep. I get it.

Starting point is 01:13:30 I get it. Don't speak to, don't speak. But I'm so sorry. We won't speak to American media. So sorry. Tweet I've been enjoying from Cthulhuie Lewis in the news at Trey Desert tweeted instant deleted tweet hall of fame nominee and then retweeted a New England Patriots tweet.

Starting point is 01:13:49 So they drafted somebody named Kobe Miner with the very last pick in the NFL draft and they tweeted an image of him with the words, a minor because his last name name's minor, which is amazing. Oh, Kobe. Uh, anyways, you can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien and on blue sky at Jack OB, the number one. You can find us on Twitter and blue sky at daily zeitgeist. We're at the daily zeitgeist on Instagram. You can go to the description of the episode, wherever you're listening to

Starting point is 01:14:23 this and you can find the footnotes. Which is where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode. We also link off to a song that we think you might enjoy. Hey, Myles, is there a song that you think people might enjoy? Yeah, this is a group called Rio Costa, K-O-S-T-A, and there's a track called ancients and so if you like jungle if you like You know that that's sort of like entertainment Paula This feels like kind of a mix between like sort of psychedelic II but funky with a lot of With falsetto vocals. I think it's great very look, you know, this is great great music

Starting point is 01:15:00 It's time. It's time to let our big toe shoot up in our food Okay, so this is ancients by the group Rio Costa. Check it out. We'll link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zyte Guys is a production of iHeartRadio from our podcast from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's gonna do it for us. This morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is

Starting point is 01:15:21 trending. And we will talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. The Daily Zyte Guys is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Bae Wang. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Edited and engineered by Justin Connor. It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo

Starting point is 01:15:45 to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate Topher Grace stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama.

Starting point is 01:16:14 To whom much is given, much is expected. The guilt comes from am I doing enough? Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist. So let's unpack that. Having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country and the world, I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Starting point is 01:16:35 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The biggest stars in country music will be taking the stage at our 2025 i I Heart Country Festival, presented by Capital One. Ladies and gentlemen, Brooks and Dunn, Thomas Rhett,

Starting point is 01:16:54 Rascal Flatts, Cole Swindell, Sam Hunt, Megan Moroney, Bailey Zimmerman, Nate Smith, special guest, Dasha. I Heart Country Festival, let's go!

Starting point is 01:17:05 Stream only on Hulu, Saturday, May 3rd, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 Pacific. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope,

Starting point is 01:17:28 about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Daily Zeitgeist - The Normalization Of AI (with Dr Kerry McInerney) 04.29.25

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The Daily Zeitgeist - The Normalization Of AI (with Dr Kerry McInerney) 04.29.25

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.