The Gargle - Meat growth | AI teachers | Power drain

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Join host Alice Fraser and guest editors James Nokise and Laura Davis for episode 148 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics!🍔 Meat growth👩🏻‍⚕��� NHS abuse👨🏻‍🏫 AI teachers🪫 Power drain😫 ReviewsStory 1: https://scitechdaily.com/breakthrough-could-reduce-cultivated-meat-production-costs-by-up-to-90/Story 2: https://news.sky.com/story/nhs-england-staff-faced-more-than-84-000-cases-of-unwanted-sexual-behaviour-last-year-major-survey-finds-13089240Story 3: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/06/ai-tools-teachers-chatgpt-writableStory 4: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/ai-data-centers-power/HOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Laura Davis. Welcome. Hello. And James Nukise, also welcome. Hello. You're coming from opposite ends of the world. For people who are, I think, technically considered one flesh, you're quite far apart. Yes, I'm currently in Western Australia, sitting in my car watching the birds.

And I'm currently in Western Edinburgh, sitting in the windowless cupboard, watching Laura, watching the birds. I mean, specifically, we just missed some discourse about the fact that you're in a room that you're calling a cupboard, but in the room that you're calling a cupboard, there is also a cupboard that Laura built you a sound studio in that you're not in. It's completely insulting. It's sort of a podcast inception. I mean, I don't know if we need to go that far into the marital details of podcasters, Alice, that we start, you know, studio shaming people at the beginning of the record. Well, let's not studio shame. Let's take hands together and leap into the deep well

that is this week's top stories. But first, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover of this week's magazine is Ryan Gosling, as Ken, at the Oscars, winning the hearts of the nation by doing a song, basically, which reminds me that people can uncritically just enjoy things. I haven't seen any nasty thoughts about it yet online, though I'm sure there are some. And the satirical cartoon this week is a badly photoshopped picture of the royal family. That's just the satirical cartoon this week is a badly Photoshopped picture of the royal family. That's just the satirical cartoon. I find it so exciting to see how much energy is going into what isn't a picture of the royal family, basically.

James, are you tracking this? Are you a royal watcher? Yes, in the way that all colonials are, and that we're all quietly messaging each other going, it's finally happening, it's happening. Basically, I didn't know anything about it until today and then I started reading about it and I couldn't stop. And, yeah, I've never been that interested in the royal family. It doesn't bother me, you know, all of the controversies

at the moment about who's marrying in and who's marrying out. I don't really care what untalented sort of mid-range actor Meghan Markle decided to marry. It doesn't really register with me. But certainly I saw a lot of photos of the photo with lots of circles around them. And I discovered that I'm very bad at detecting Photoshop because they had circles around things that I was like, is that sass? I don't know. I don't image edit.

No, I don't think that Kate Middleton does either. Yeah, the worst excuse for those who didn't follow the story, the royals put out a picture of Kate Middleton as proof of life, which people immediately began unpicking and various wire services took down after it was shown to be quite badly photoshopped and then kate middleton put up a tweet or probably her people put up a tweet saying she was just experimenting with photoshop because that's the thing that she likes doing and everyone in the world went no the, the reason we enjoy, the only reason we enjoy the royal family is because we do not believe that any of them have ever touched a computer

in their f***ing lives. They have people for that. Well, everyone's been wondering where she is. And it turns out she's been under the bus that the royal family is throwing her under. Top story now, horrifying meat growth news. Laura Davis, you're our meat growth expert. Can you unpack this story for us? Okay, I am fine with this.

Basically, they have worked out a way to make meat grow without an animal having to grow the meat. The meat grows the meat. And there's also another bit of research where they're working out how to do that with milk so that the cows don't make the milk, the milk makes the milk. It just replicates itself and grows because it doesn't need to be stimulated by an entire... They've managed to take the cow out of the meat. And I think that's fine. I'm all for meatless meat meat.

Well, I think this is one of the interesting things about modern kind of meat manufacture and environmentally friendly solutions to the meat problem, which is that they are all incredibly ethically sound and deeply upsetting on a visceral level. Like the whole let's replace protein with bugs thing. And then in this instance, they've cultivated cells and essentially given them cancer so that then they keep growing themselves exponentially in a way that would be horrifying if it were a living being

but isn't because it's in a slab of meat but is also horrifying because conceptually it's... It's better and worse. I don't know about this endlessly growing blob. It's so much better and it's so much worse and it's also the least exciting apocalypse movie where just a meat blob breaks out of a lab and keeps getting bigger. Yeah, and on the side of the packet is,

I can't believe it's not better. I just felt really old because clearly neither of you two ever saw the 1980s horror movie The Blob. Look, but the thing was The Blob wasn't just a blob. The Blob was sort of more malevolent and sentient than this meat blob. This meat would just be... Give it time.

...unappetised. This meat would just be, it would just sit in the street being unappetized. This is clearly how it starts. I just don't know if we need it to know. Like if I can go a decent 40 years without having any clue what's in the chicken, in Kentucky Fried Chicken, do I need to know? Just give me a cheaper hamburger.

That's all I need. I don't need to understand where it came from. I just need to be the head of my big cap. Yeah, which I think might be positive for the future of this meat growth industry if they can make it inexpensive enough to produce that it's competitive with the environmentally unfriendly forms of meat production. I feel like the real question is, are vegans now ethically required to invest in meat self-growing?

Well, you could definitely argue that it still requires the death of one animal at least. No, just get an ice cream scoop and take a chunk out of a passing sheep or something. I feel when it comes to meat eaters the barometer is still is it human no no more questions right the scientists aren't exactly like making everyone feel calm about this either i think that my favorite quote is, was a guy, the chief scientist came out and said, oh, it's sort of, it's not exactly a nutrient.

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In the road or in your hand, Forks open up options and sandwiches with equal ease. Forks, time for a change. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era.

Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. And that brings us to NHS news now. And this is the deeply upsetting news that NHS staff in England faced more than 84,000 cases of unwanted sexual behaviour last year.

James Nukise. Don't do it, Alice. Don't do it. Consent. You've done consent training for football teams in the past. Can you unpack this story? last year. James Nookie say... Don't do it, Alice. Don't do it. You've done consent training for football teams in the past. Can you unpack this story for us? Thank you. That was something of a very sinister tone to why I'm still in the UK. Yeah, I'm just going to make sure I get the numbers right because it is, like you say, a big survey. It's 58,500. That's the size of the survey. 8.67% of employees are covered, and it's 84,000 incidents.

Almost 26,000 staff also said they were the victim of similar incidents carried out by colleagues. So you've got the 58,500 who have experienced this and then you've got 26,000 going, oh yeah, and not just from crazy people in the public. It's also from our colleagues. This came out after there was a Sky News investigation, which discovered that it was rife in the ambulance service. And NHS England, not to be confused with NHS Scotland or NHS Wales, which are the ones that work, they've said that they are putting measures in place to protect frontline workers. And so thousands of body cameras have been issued to ambulance staff as well and look it's it's quite the change in tone for England which which only a pandemic ago was out

there clapping in the streets for their health workers and now it looks like they're trying to get clapped in the streets with their health workers. If you're clapping for your health workers at least we can see where your hands are. I feel it's a good start. I blame this on pornography basically. Sexy nurses, sexy doctors, get it out of the idiom. There's nothing sexy about somebody taking your temperature rectally. There's nothing sexy about surgery. Let's keep get it out of the idiom. There's nothing sexy about somebody taking your temperature rectally. There's nothing sexy about surgery. Let's keep those things out of the sexy image bin. I just think this is so heartbreaking that these people who are spending their lives helping us are basically just getting harassed left, right and centre, I think, statistically.

basically just getting harassed left, right and centre, I think, statistically. I think it just speaks to the overconfidence of British people, Alice, because any time a nurse or a doctor has been anywhere near my genitalia, and the more I'm over 35, the more they seem to have to be. I cannot tell you how little confidence I have in trying to grope them during the procedure. I just it's you got to have ultra confidence to be bent over with someone telling you to cough and go. I think I'm I think I'm picking up a signal. Well, sort of by definition, you're not at your best when you're being exposed to doctors and nurses, physically or psychologically. It is a strange time to be putting a move on. Some people just trying to grab a handful on the way out? What?

There was a saying back in World War II that the nurses who would be nursing the soldiers would have to give a touch of the cold spoon, which was that while they were giving sponge baths, they might occasionally have to administer a cold spoon to an overenthusiastic penis. We've all got our kinks. I don't know of a cold spoon. It's such a British way of dealing with an erection. Why is it tapping it? Don't get the spoon like it's a hard british way of dealing with an erection why is it tapping it get the spoon

like it's a hard-boiled egg yeah why does it always have to involve tea i just think ding ding i mean what's the solution what how do we how do we fix this other than it's probably not cutlery i mean look i'm not sure a knife wouldn't work well well look I mean if we pull a knife out on an erection uh and it stays hot what then how let's phrase it what what what kind of society are we building with the spoon you got a margin just I think it's from the outside in left to right outside in we are also assuming that's it's the men who are out here doing all the harassing. Let's be fair. There's definitely some middle-aged English women who have lunged at doctors.

Let's not pretend. Oh, yeah. Yeah, at least 2% of these 84,000 incidents are going the other way. Yeah, some carnal mid-England housewives of Huntington coming at you. That brings us to our

reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. And this week, laura you've brought something in for us what have you brought for us um i've brought in uh the essential bruce springsteen uh double set kiss uh cd that is in my car uh that is jammed in the cd player and so i have listened to it so many times. James bought it on a whim

a couple years ago and it got stuck and um yep track one Growing Up great. Two Rosalito great. Uh probably on the 17th thousandth time that you've listened to Glory Days. It starts to wear a bit thin. I've really given this album some consideration. Nobody has listened to this. It's a compilation album. It's missing a couple. It's missing a few.

I reckon I'd give it three. It's not even a good Bruce Springsteen compilation CD to have stuck in your cd player and playing all of the time that was an act of love laura davis this is this is why couples try not to work together you buy your wife a bruce springsteen cd and several years later she's reviewing it to the whole f***ing world on the Mates podcast.

Well, I can't get it out. Three stars for the compilation Bruce Springsteen CD. James, what have you brought in for us? I've brought Spring in Scotland because I am told we are in it,

and it is the middle of March, and no, I disagree, strong disagree. I've seen nothing to tell me that we are in spring. I have seen no birds. I have seen no flowering. It's literally just people walking about possibly slightly less dour. It is still cold. I am still wearing five layers. I am uncertain that this season actually touches this part of the world. So how many stars?

Minus five degrees. Minus five degrees in stars. I am going to do a slightly unusual thing. And I've brought in a review for our listenership this week. I'm going to review screaming extremely loudly, a thing that very few of us get to do in our adult life. Very few forums are available for fully unrestrained screaming, and the ones that are available tend not to have witnesses. But about five weeks ago, I had the great opportunity to give birth in a room with three other people present, and you're allowed to scream as loudly as you like and no one can look embarrassed about it or tell you to be quiet or give you any advice on the screaming at all other than one brave doctor who said can you try screaming down into your pelvis which I thought

was quite a good acting note, sort of directing the energy of the scream into the pushing out of the baby. Anyway, I had a great time, got a great baby, ended up with a sore throat, which was quite satisfying because I am a very non-confrontational person. I don't think I've ever screamed at anyone in my adult life, even when they definitely deserved it. So I wouldn't recommend necessarily having a baby in order to get the opportunity to scream at the top of your lungs for a minute at a time, five times in a row. But if you can find another way, maybe pretend you're having a baby and enjoy the screaming. Five stars for the screaming, five stars for the baby.

Birth-giving, oof. I feel like that can't be rated in stars. And that brings us to our next story, which is the future is AI and AI is the future. Teachers are now using AI to mark their students' work in an attempt to relieve people of excessive work. The problem being, of course, that a lot of students are now submitting AI-written texts.

So we're cutting the whole people part out of both teaching and learning. Laura Davis, you are a hive mind. Can you unpack this story for us? Well, my mum is a high school teacher and look, marking takes up so much time and, you know, you're one teacher and you have multiple classes with many students and those numbers are only increasing. So I absolutely see the sort of the appeal of it. They're calling it there's a human in the loop. which is the teachers are only using the AI to get notes generated and then they double check before they pass that feedback onto the student. So it's sort of making teachers into the middleman sort of manager

where the students generate the AI. A robot makes the assignment, a robot marks the assignment, and a human passes it in the middle to another human. So essentially you've gone from marking students to marking the work of the robot. In this, there are two humans on one plane and two robots on another plane, and they're not really connecting. The information is not going into the student, it's going into the robot. Making the robot ever smarter, presumably.

Yes. Or at least letting them know how stupid we are. I think that's it. I think, you know, pressure builds diamonds. I feel like AI is highlighting how secretly dumb we've actually been as an educated society. I feel like we've all been like, the big societal secret is we've all actually been

academically coasting and not taking it seriously. And now AI is just kind of really making that float to the top. And heaps of people are getting caught up. Because AI is essentially cliff notes of the future. We've just kind of gone, you know how you'd write an essay and they go, did you read the book? You're like, actually, I just spent like five bucks and bought a cliff notes and then semi-plagiarized that.

So I've heard. And now it's all getting exposed. Yeah, but I feel like this is going to reward people who put in the effort. And I'm hoping that that'll be the outcome. They'll have to figure out a new way to assess people's learning and it might go back to, you know, the old vivas where you had to go and face a panel of professors who would ask you questions about what you'd learned or, you know, fight you to the death over the knowledge that you had or throw you off a cliff and if you bounced then you were a witch.

Will any of these professors be robots? Yes. Oh, yes. If a robot can attend every class and contribute then i i imagine they'll get they'll get the marks to become a professor why not i'd prefer the robots get the credit i'm really against stolen valor at the moment i was thinking about how to explain to my toddler child about the new baby and uh a friend of mine said, oh, tell them about the stalk. Tell them that the stalk is going to deliver the new baby.

And I was like, f*** the stalk. I'm going to tell the toddler that I pushed the baby out of my body using my muscles because I want the credit for the work that I put in. F*** the stalk. Yeah, you made the meat. The stalk is someone walking into an army bar wearing camo pants who never saw combat. You know, maybe we've been looking at this all wrong,

and I don't mean the army camo pants stalk, but the chat GBT. I'm wondering who invented the are you a robot test because maybe the robots did and they've been quietly training us for our future jobs to identify cars and traffic lights while they've been studying up on all the essential things they'll need to run the rest of the world. And we're just going to end up being the traffic cops of the AI future. Well, they're not going to like it when they find out you said that, James. That brings us to our final story of this week's edition of The Gargle. America's power grid is being pushed to its absolute brink

by AI and clean tech manufacturing. The future is here and the future is dirty. James Nukise, you're clear, sighted about the future. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. And look, first of all, just a trigger warning for fans of The Matrix. You're not going to like this one. So power usage in the United States has been rocketing up because of the

needs to power all of these new and developed AIs and data storage. And when we say powering up, I'm just making sure I've got the numbers right. It's about it's over twice what they were looking at for last year in terms of the energy needed. In fact, they're worried that all of this AI being developed and all of the power that tech firms need, you know, the big players, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft developed and all of the power that tech firms need you know the big the big players amazon apple

google meta microsoft uh is gonna mean that other parts of the united states are gonna be out of power um because they they haven't got enough for the entire grid so they're trying to figure out why right now how to relieve pressure on the grid um and for anyone who remembers the first matrix film that that was the conundrum that ai faced before we all ended up being plugged in as the batteries for the the tech dystopia so it's the the they're talking about having to build nuclear plants to power the AI developing and if that doesn't sound

like the prequel of the sci-fi dystopia series, I don't really know what does but I mean James, you have to consider, obviously this is a high cost but think about what we're getting out of it. It's like these AI things are generating thousands of images of

Link from Zelda having sex with Bowser from Mario. And look, I'm not saying I don't you know, I'm on the other side of the world, laws in Australia, I'm not saying I don't appreciate that. Alright? I'm not saying it's not helpful. I'm on the other side of the world, as long as I'm in Australia, I'm not saying I don't appreciate that. I'm not saying it's not helpful. I'm just saying. You leave me out of this. Well, that's exactly what I've been doing. What I'm saying is it's kind of incredible

that this is the cost of development that people haven't factored in. I don't think when people read stories sort of the cost of developments that people haven't factored in is that, you know, I don't think when people read stories of, you know, AI affecting, you know, student studies or AI building images of Taylor Swift with a football team that they go, oh, this is why the lights won't go on in my house for three hours a day. Yeah, well, there was a couple of weeks ago, there was this controversy about Google's AI image generation

bringing up unfortunately diverse historical images when you'd say, hey, Google AI, whatever it's called, generate me a picture of a German soldier in World War II. It would try and bring up pictures of people of all ethnic backgrounds, which historically speaking is probably not accurate. And there was a big controversy about it. And everyone went to Google's AI and tried to test it for themselves. And in doing that, killed all of the whales, I assume. Just the energy drain of these incredibly trivial processes feels deeply disheartening to me. I think the idea that we finally build a functioning AI and to do so drains the United States of its entire power grid,

Rippling the number one empire in the world to create a true artificial intelligence is just such a Terminator-style future. And we kind of, it's like we are capable of imagining the worst case scenarios. And then we're just like, nah, but that won't happen. Laura, how do you feel about it? Look, it's going to be really good for the insects it's going to be dark um it's going to be you know it's a lot less light pollution um there's a whole bunch of perks i think it's it's saying um it's partly because people are trying to heat their homes with electricity people are trying to use less fossil fuels people are trying to heat their homes with electricity. People are trying to use less fossil fuels. People are trying to use more electrics. And there's been never a greater demand for electricity.

So I guess it's, you know, what do you want to turn off in America? Where are they flicking the switches? You know, shouldn't be the hospitals. You don't want that. Vegas is real bright. You know what I think they can get rid of? I think we can lose the flashy, coloured light backgrounds of Twitch streamers. I think that's the first on the chopping block. I think it should be sort of like an armistice, you know, just sort of everybody has to bring

something to the table to turn off. I'm just saying you don't need to be purple while you're playing Grand Theft Auto. Police are accepting LEDs. Just bring in your LEDs over the next 72 hours. No questions asked. Hand them in. Mains powered vibrators.

No one needs that much energy. Look, I don't know what the future holds for us, but I do know that I'll be asking some sort of AI to give me energy saving tips in the future. I mean, that's why they're getting us to figure out where the traffic lights are so we can turn them off. Turn them off and take your chances. And that brings us to the end of this week's edition of The Gargle.

I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. Laura, have you got anything to plug? I have a Melbourne International Comedy Festival season coming up. There are 26 shows, and if you're in Melbourne from the 27th of this month, you could come to any of them. I highly recommend doing that. I'll be heading to Melbourne myself for a week and I'll probably see your show at

least twice. James, have you got anything to plug? I have a monthly political gig up here in Edinburgh called The Edit, which is a political new material night and will be happening a couple of days before the Bugle Live

here in Edinburgh as well and if you are in New Zealand at the beginning of April then I will be at a very Samoan comedy show opening for your finger for pulley eye at the Curitikanoa Aotea Centre, which if you are not a Pacific Islander but a fan of the gargle and the bugle, you could pop along to get your cultural fill for the year. I am not doing anything, so don't worry about me. This is about the most I can manage myself for doing at the moment, but there is a bugle tour happening at the moment, a live tour,

and I'm appearing on some of those dates as a big head on a screen. So come along to those on the off chance that you'll see me looming two-dimensionally in the background of Andy Zaltzman's terrible puns. I also have two specials out at the moment at gofasterstripe.com. If you look up Alice Fraser, there's two of my specials there for 10 pounds, or you can get all of my specials for free. If you sign up at my Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. That's a one-stop shop for all of my standup specials, podcasts, and blogs,

as well as my weekly writers meetings. If you want to write with me, if you've got anything that you want to write, come along to those patreon.com slash alicefraser this is a bugle podcast and alicefraser production your editor is ped hunter your executive producer is chris skinner i'll talk to you again next week you can listen to other programs from the bugle including the bugle catharsis tiny revolutions top stories and the gargle wherever you find your podcasts