The Vergecast - Vibe coding through the GPT-5 mess

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

GPT-5 is here, and it’s not going so well. This week on The Vergecast, Jake, Vee, and Hayden discuss the bumpy launch of OpenAI’s latest model and why GPT-5 isn’t as big of a leap as GPT-4. Then, everyone shares their vibe coding projects and the bumpy journey to making anything usable. After that, our newest segment: Corporate Shenanigans, where we rate the week in strange corporate moves on a scale from “actually serious” to “total joke.” Finally, the Thunder Round returns, new and improved, to discuss ditching your phone for a smartwatch, doctors relying too much on AI, AOL dial-up shutting down, the Pebble Time 2, and why you shouldn’t trust what AI chatbots say about themselves. Further reading: ChatGPT won’t remove old models without warning after GPT-5 backlash OpenAI will update GPT-5’s “personality” after user backlash ChatGPT is bringing back 4o as an option because people missed it Sam Altman shared more about what went wrong with those GPT-5 graphs OpenAI gives some employees a ‘special’ multimillion-dollar bonus Anthropic just made its latest move in the AI coding wars Anthropic’s Claude chatbot can now remember your past conversations Perplexity offers to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion Apple is suing Apple Cinemas Apple Cinemas responds to Apple lawsuit Apple returns blood oxygen monitoring to the latest Apple Watches Elon Musk says he’s suing Apple for rigging App Store rankings Ditching my phone for an LTE smartwatch was a humbling experience Here’s a look at the final Pebble Time 2 design  Some doctors got worse at detecting cancer after relying on AI Google’s healthcare AI made up a body part — what happens when doctors don’t notice? Chatbots aren’t telling you their secrets AOL is finally shutting down dial-up Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of unsatisfying corporate stunts. I'm Jake Kasternakas, executive editor at The Verge. Nilai, David, those guys are out on parental leave. They'll be back later this year with me today by Popular Demand, Verge Senior Reviewer, Vsong. I'm popular.

And always in demand on the Verge cast, and now, making her Verge cast debut, we've got Verge Senior AI reporter, Hayden Field. Woohoo! Sight. So glad to have you both here. We've got a lot to talk about today. was a big week for weird corporate stunts and lawsuits. We're going to do a corporate shenanigans power hour. Disclosure may not be a full hour, but there will be a lot of shenanigans. I promise you that.

We'll see how it goes. The Thunder Round is back and better than ever. But most importantly, we've got a lot more to talk about with GPT-5 because that launch did not go so well. It really did not. So last week, we recorded this show, like literally, like they had just wrapped up. They had just wrapped up. up. And now people have actually had a chance to use it. And they have thoughts and emotions.

A lot. There are people have a lot of emotions. So many emotions. What's that? Subreddit, the AI boyfriend subreddit. Oh, yeah. They were really talking. It's a meltdown. So people were furious that chat GPT removed the ability to use old models without warning. Open AISA won't do that again. People think GPD5 is less friendly than GPD4. So OpenAI is updating his personality. And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, had a fairly unsatisfying explanation for the atrocious, atrocious bar graph crimes that we saw last week. So a lot of things went wrong with this launch.

Before we get into the things that went wrong, can we all at least agree that the new splash screen on Chatubit where it has a bunch of different colors is the biggest upgrade here, right? They spent a ton of time on this model, but I like the colors. The colors are good.

I thought they were vaguely appellee. Like I looked at it as like, what is this? an Apple app. Does Apple just own the rainbow? Like, they're just any... It did look a little Apple. It did look a little Apple.

Right? Like, I was just kind of like, I don't know how I feel about that. But I was like, oh, color. I don't know. We love color. We love colors. I actually, big color proponent here. The ChatGPT standard screen is kind of the most boring screen in existence.

Like Google... It looks like a piece of paper. It does. Yeah. Yeah. There's like nothing there for like the most advanced piece of technology in the world. It's like a beige PC It is and you know

I will admit I was very surprised I was like oh Colors This is oh this must be a significant launch That kind of They had to differentiate Because the launch itself wasn't as exciting for people So they knew the colors would get them

You know it worked It worked I hope the colors stay I don't know I ran out of chatchip of GPT5 queries And so now it's like back to like beige again I don't know if that's just like It was like an intro period or Maybe it was like a mind trick.

Like they want you to want the colors. So they're trying to get you to like buy more credits. Can I tell you something? Like I'm going to use this over Claude if I get those colors back. Like that was somebody's got to get on these interfaces. They must have done an internal study. Like they had to be studying to be unconscious. Okay.

But the main thing here is, right, people are waiting for like, you know, two years or something for GPT5, right? Like Open AI has built it up to be this almost like mythic, launch, right? GVD5 will be the next big one. And they've had a bunch of intermittent model launches in between. But I think there was this assumption, this promise that GVD5 was going to be the big one. And they came out, they had this event. And to me, watching the event, it didn't really feel like there was any one key thing. And it feels like in the week after we haven't really seen that. I guess, Hayden, you've been reporting on this. Am I missing it or is it just not there. Like, what happened and why are people, like, so upset? Exactly. You're right. It just

wasn't there. And I think that's why people were so upset. It was built up to be this really overhyped, mythic launch. Alman even tweeted a picture of the Death Star the night before, which was, like, max level of hype. People were freaking out. And then all of a sudden it comes out and it's just seen as kind of being incremental upgrades. Like, it's better at coding. It's better at answering healthcare questions. They say it's better at creative writing. We'll get into that in a minute because a lot of people disagreed. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't anything too crazy. It was just incremental, you know, study upgrades, nothing huge. And part of that was the fact that it wasn't like a big compute jump either. The other models in between each one, it was like a 100x jump. This one

was a lot less. So they didn't have as much compute to work with. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't that exciting and people also thought it was way worth at writing than the previous model. I was mid. I've got to say, I've been using it for the last week. Very mid. What is it doing differently? It's just like a little more flowery or something? No, it was, it's like, it's less.

It's less. Oh, it's work. Well, you know, it's been back and forth, right? Because people were like, you took my friend away, which, first of all, it's not your friend. It's just not your friend. Like, it was a little more matter of fact at first. And like, when I was using it, I was like, oh, it's less like, you know, it's less like,

like yappy. Great. I actually love that. And now it feels like they've tweaked it a bit to make it yappier, but not in a in a useful way. They change its personality because people were freaking out because it was more robotic, cold, more like matter of fact, like you said, which I also appreciate. I kind of like that. But a lot of people missed the supportive vibes, the tone, the warmth. And they felt like their friend had been taken away. And also they just thought, yeah, exactly. And they also just thought it was worse at writing. Like, honestly, in the marketing materials that Open AI put out, they were like, compare these two wedding toasts, one from GBT40 and one from GPD5. And they were like, look at how much better the GPD 5 one is. And I actually thought the 401 was much better. Like, the 5 one kind of

sounded like it was written by CHAPT, the 401, I could have been fooled. I saw something that was just like, the MDASHes are still there. And I was like, well, fine. Never take away my M dash. You'll pry it from my cold hands. It's, it's trained on. writers like actual writing and what do we do we use copious amounts of m dashes so my favorite punctuation it's it yeah this is like try the m dash from a dead cold fingers most of an editor's job is just deleting m dashes and the in writer's copy yeah i'm very guilty of tons of m dashes they're beautiful they're a beautiful thing and uh we use too much of them i have a rule one m dash per paragraph and like if i go beyond that i have to murder my darlings but you know one of my own

Old editors said one M-Dash per story. Per story. I couldn't do it. Oh, please, please. I had a lot on the semicolon. It was horrible. No one wants a semicolon. I know, semi-colon's even worse.

The semicolon is the cheat, though. When I'm like, I'm like, oh, Jesus, I don't know what to do here. It's like, I guess everyone's going to know that the semicolon was supposed to be something else. You know, that's when you know the AI has evolved, like, chatchy B-6. No more M-Dash is, guys. It's the semicolon. Yeah, then we can go back to the M-Dash. Then we can go back if Sam Malton's listening.

So this 40 thing, I don't understand this, right? When I've chatted with chat GPT before, I didn't feel like there was like a personality. I don't know that I could tell you the difference between 40 and three and clawed four. It depends on like how willing you are to forget the mirror is there in the types of queries and conversations you have. So like when I first started talking with chat GPT, it was like getting real flowery and poetic with me and like depressed. Like I was making chat GPD depressed and it was saying things just like, the weight of the world is on my shoulders and I feel the burden of humanity being

bloody, bloody blue. And I would go to my spouse and I'd be like, oh my God, can you see like, I've made chat GTPT really depressed. And he's like, no, no, honey, that's just you. That's like, it's reflecting you. And they showed me their prompts and chat GPD is just way more. robotic with them because they don't like like the whole personality thing. And then once I realized that, I was like, oh, Christ, I got philosophical with the thing. And it was like reflecting back my own

existential milieu. So let me just talk to it. Like it's a robot. And so after that, it's still like warm and encouraging. But like I tweaked it. I was like, only give me 2% flattery. I don't need you to yap at me. Stop asking me questions at the end of every single thing because I can see the plane grab at future engagement. I don't want that, like, that sort of stuff. That's the thing. It really is how you use it, because for me, I'm really robotic with it. I'm just, I use it like Google. Like, I'm not, like, you know, going into big stories or, like, typing more than one sentence at a time. So it's always pretty robotic back with me. But I've seen a lot of people that use it more for emotional support or therapy, that's a whole kind of worms too. But, you know, it kind of mirrors

back what you put into it. That's so interesting. And I guess maybe that explains why, like, the people who are already very emotional and giving that emotion over to chat GPT, of course they would be the ones to notice that it changes. And of course, they would therefore be upset because they're using this for that purpose. I did not notice at all. I just, in my normal queries, I'm like, this is basically the same. Yeah. If you're using it kind of in a utilitarian. way, you're really not going to notice it. But like, I don't know. I'm going to subreddit sometimes and I'm like, what are people using this for? And there was one that was like based on everything I've ever asked you, analyze like all these personality facets of me and what like mental like illnesses that I am

like have a propensity to. And my friend is like, oh my God, I want you to like try this. And I tried it. And you know, it read me for filth. I did not like it. And then I was like, oh, okay, cool. And so like in those types of queries whenever like I'm trying to test out what it's going to say to me and what it's going to throw to me, that is when I noticed that it was a little more curtain. It was a little more factual. It was a little bit more like not sycophantic and saying things like, you're a great V. You can do everything you put your mind to. You are so talented.

Instead, it's just like, well, you know, you're good. Here at the Vergecast, we're very supportive. You can do anything you put your mind to. You can. As long as it is within, you know, the physical realm. That's, we will stop there on like chat chabit. There's also like a TikTok trend right now where people are asking chat chabit about their own like biggest red flag.

And so it's the same thing as you just said. They're like, oh, based on everything I've ever asked you, you know, what's my biggest red flag? What's my biggest like flaw? And then they're posting that. And so, yeah, I think that's the type of person that's seeing a difference in this type of response. So the thing I guess I want to ask about is I feel like there's sort of two parts to

Jack ChbT. There's like the normal people part. And then there's coding. And coding is what they kind of went deep on at the event. And that seems to be a little space that they really wanted to catch up in and maybe get a head on. And they had that partnership with cursor. I'm curious, Hayden, have you heard more about this? Like, is Chatchapy5 better for coding?

Is that working? It is better at coding. And I think that's one of the main parts where it shines a little brighter. Like the other things, when they put out all their marketing pushes, basically they highlighted three things. Healthcare, coding, and creative writing. The creative writing, obviously, a lot of people disagree. They said this is the worst. Reading the Reddit comments about GBT 5's creative writing style was hilarious. Like, I've never seen something dragged so deeply. And then healthcare, you know, that's kind of untested. Yeah, I mean, can it answer your questions better? We don't know.

I tried. I get into that. Okay, yeah, I want to hear about that. But coding, it is better. I mean, right now, if you look at Chatbot Arena, one of the industry's biggest leaderboards for ranking LLMs. It is at the top of the coding category. You know, it is better, but I don't think it's crazily better. You know, we didn't see an insane jump. We just saw an incremental one. So is it better? Yes. Is it, is the hype paying off? No. So, you know, we saw in their marketing materials also, they put out a couple examples of things that could do, like make a little game, you know, create like a lo-fi visualizer, aka iTunes in the 2000s. And that was cool. But, you know, we'll get into this later, but my tries on this kind of glitched a lot.

So I don't know. I want to play a clip really fast. Our colleague Alex Heath is co-hosting Dakota right now, and he got a chance to speak with Chat ChbT head, Nick Turley, on the show this week. And Nick said something that I found really insightful in helping me understand why it's so hard to improve ChatGBTGPT as a product. It's just confusing when you're building for so many different users because you can, on the one hand, have a vocal set of power users who I think very rightfully have feedback about the way that we rolled five out. On the other hand, you also have a large swath of more typical consumer

users, and it's their first time actually seeing interacting with the concept of reasoning, like a thinking model and the smarts that come with that. And I think that's tremendous, and we're going to see it show up in our stats. So he breaks it down into like power users and regular users. But in my head, this also sort of pans out to, okay, right, there's like, So, GPT is 500 products in one, but the interface is the same for everybody, right? And so how do you even start to improve each one of those, right? We're talking about, okay, writing is a little worse, but coding is a little better, but it's the same product that has to do both of these.

And it's like, at what point do they just start splitting this up and turning this to multiple different products instead of just being like, it's one thing, it does everything? One of the coolest parts of the launch, honestly, was the switch that they, introduced. So they've noticed, they said they've noticed that a bunch of their consumers want to not make a decision when they come to this product. They want a product. They don't want a decision. They don't understand all the confusing, insane names that they name all their models. And so they just want to come. And it's like, you know, automatically routed to whatever model

is best for that. And so that's what they did with this. I did think that was one of the only like notable parts of this launch was that they were able to build something that did that. Obviously, it kind of blew back in their faces a little bit with the 4-0 thing. But besides that, it was cool that they were able to kind of automatically route queries depending on what's best for it. So I think they're going to keep going in that direction because, I mean, they don't want the average user, the non-power user, to see the behind-the-scenes of all these different models and what's best at what. They just want it to automatically happen for them and be super, no friction. That makes sense, like from just a general average person user point, but like I did see people on Reddit go like, this is unacceptable because I use Model 3.0 for logic reasoning and I use 40 for this and I use 4.5 for whatever.

And I was like, wow, that's way too much like differentiation and thought for the average person to actually just go in. And like, I just don't think they're going to go into those specialized routes for that reason because I, I, I, I, I have a hard enough time thinking what product I'm going to use for what. Couldn't be me, yes. But I think that for some people, they pay a lot, especially if they're on that higher subscription tier, like $200 a month or whatever. They want choice. And so I think Open AIA learned their lesson here in that they need to give a lot of notice

that they're going to take some models offline, especially because, you know, people in us, I've had a funeral for a Claude model the other day. So they need to give notice and just, you know, let their power users kind of weigh in. It's so wild just to see like the personification of it though, like morning chat GPT 4-0, morning old versions of Claude. I'm just like, it reminds me of like back when Sony had those little Ibo dogs that they, the robotic dogs that they discontinued. The eye dogs? Yeah. And then like they discontinued it for a while.

And then owners in Japan, like once their little robot dogs started deprecating, they held funnels for them. Oh no. And then like, you know, it was like a whole thing. And, you know, but that sort of made sense. It was a little robot dog. It was cute. It was lovable. But people doing this for an intangible AI model, that kind of makes me go like,

ah. I think it's sad too because I don't know. I feel like it's human nature to personify things. Like we name our cars. You know, we like name everything. And now you can name chat GPT. And so it's hard because it's in our nature to personify things. But it's now that something.

can seemingly form an attachment back to you. It's not, but it seems that way to some people. It's harder to, you know, have any form of separation. And I think that's why people are spiraling into tragedy. De-psis or delusion because, you know, if you're kind of lonely and you don't talk to that many people, you do. One guy on Meta was saying, oh, they took away my only friend overnight with the 4-0 thing. So tragic. Like not to like make fun of that person because, I don't know, like the more, like all these products, our attention is the final product, right? That's why Chitapit always ends with a question to, like, have you engaged more. So, like, if attention is the product and we're all isolated and just paying attention to these products more, and then

your friend changes, like, I do feel like it's sad. It's just genuinely upsetting. I'm glad this didn't come out during the pandemic. Oh, boy. I can't even imagine. People would not have handled it well. You are right, though, about the different models. And I do think that's actually one of the things that makes it such a challenging product, too, because if you are trying to use this for work, every single, right, if you had to change your productivity software every day or for every task, you'd go crazy. And there is some element here where they're constantly refining these models and they're constantly introducing new ones. And for somebody who needs to use AI professionally, and they add a new model one day, and they're constantly refining these models. And they're

take out your old one. Even if, right, they act differently in these very unexpected, strange ways, your piece of productivity software just changed. They moved the buttons around, except it's even more like strange and existential than that because this thing doesn't have any buttons. And I think that just makes it so much more difficult for people, right? Like people being upset about Foro's personality is one thing. People not being able to get their work done as another.

And I feel like they sort of missed that. that when they introduce this new model, they're actually shuffling the deck chairs for everybody. That's because it's supposed to be everything, right? If it's everything, everywhere all at once, like the movie, then, you know, it's just, you can't. There has to be limitations somewhere. And the power users really do exactly what you said.

They use a different model for everything. So, you know, it's like you have to cater to them because they're the ones using it all day every day. So you have to at least give them some notice. So I gave everybody some homework. Yes, you did. So last week, none of us on the show were able to say that we had tried vibe coding. And so I thought it was important that we fixed that this week.

Now, I will say disclosure, none of us actually know how to code. So this is like a very different use case than a professional developer. I have friends who are like, yeah, my job is just like 90% babysitting AI coding at this point. that's not what this is. But I found OpenAI's presentation to be really interesting because I think they sort of envision this next phase for chat Chb-T, one where it starts just building stuff for us as a matter of course. And for us, it actually requires a little bit of like a mindset shift, right?

It's just like another type of query that I didn't know I could enter. You just have to start saying, hey, can you make me an interactive? Can you turn this into a game? Can you visualize this for me? So we all tried to build something, and we all have different experiences about how it went. So, V, do you want to start? Sure.

Let's just say that I had to take coding in high school, and I only passed because a blizzard totally wiped out my final, and that is the only reason why I passed. Also, shout out to Henry Chan for having a crush on me and letting me put my name on all the group projects. Love that. Wow, huge. I was not.

I was terrible at it. So I had it code me a problem that I have, which is keeping track of all of my review units. And I will share my screen so you guys can see this horrible little thing I made. And so I asked it, can you program me an interactive product inventory tracker? I need to be able to keep track of which review units I have, what's in my queue, and when I need to return lunar units by. And it thought for 19 seconds. that that's what it said here and I was like oh it's thinking really hard

and then you know it made me a lightweight single file web app for tracking and I was like I don't I don't know what this means this is what I mean by it yaps it gave me a paragraph and I went that's a lot of words it's asking me to do things and then it says open the canvas

preview to use it and I was like how do I use this because I did and then it's like you can use a standalone app open it locally save all the ad all of your, I was like, this is so much. There are eight bullet points here. There are eight bullet points within them about how you use this file.

This seems like more work than even just doing it yourself. It does. And then I was like, oh, wait, do I just click this thingy? And then it gave me this code. And I was like, this is scary. I don't like looking at this. And then there was a thing. It says run code.

And then I was like, that is a system. I don't know what I'm doing here. Like I said. So you just clicked run and it just said syntax error. And there was no further thing that you could do. And then it was like, you know, I could make this into a ready-to-open HTML file. And I was like, yes, I would like an HTML version. Please do that.

And then it did this, which is more code. And I was like, okay. And then it says, I've converted this into an HTML skeleton that you can run directly in your browser. Great. Love it. You need to paste your full React. No, don't do this to me. Don't ask me to do a thing.

And then I was like, what does this look like? Oh, no. I don't click it again. This is not, I don't understand what's happening. And then I basically was just like, can you explain this to me in a way that someone with absolutely no knowledge of coding jargon can understand? And it said, got it. Here's the plain English version.

I was like, oh, my God, there's so many words again. Save it to my computer. Another four point step. Another four point steps. And I was just like, oh, my God, there's, okay. Sure. And then I was just like, and then it says, I can. and post the full HTML here for you to save or give you a downloadable version.

I was like, okay, yeah. In my head, I'm like, just let me download this. There's so much reading going on. Here's your ready to open HTML file. But then it's like you still have to paste the code that I made for you. Right. So it lied a little bit. It lied a little bit.

I got so frustrated that I went to my dev friend and I was like, what's it telling me to do? And she's like, it's kind of lying to you, kind of. Like, you just have to know what it's saying, and then she went into a rant about how it's talking to you. Like, you know how to use code already. And that's why, in her words, women have a hard time breaking into the coding industry because everyone talks. Like, everyone knows what everything is already. And I was like, okay, that also is not helping me figure this out. I did eventually get to a point where I could see what it had created in a window.

I don't know how I got there. I did previously. and it basically recreated air table. And I was like, okay. It was just air table. It was like the exact interface of air table. It was just air table. And I was like, well, I have air table.

Yeah. Good to know. Good to know. I'm going to go back to the little notebook I was using. So it was sort of successful, but not useful and was painful to get there. It did not interface with my ADHD. Well, because I was looking at this and I was like, I thought you were just going to give me an app, but you're putting code up at me and I don't code. So this looks very intimidating and scary

to me. So I don't want to jump ahead too much, but I had a very similar experience where it continually was like, you do this, you do this. And I'm like, no. It's like a bad for your project partner. I'm like, admittedly, they did most of the work, but I'm like, you have to understand. I do not know this part. Like, this. This is why I'm asking you. Hayden, how did it go for you? Because I feel like you tried something, like, kind of advanced, too. I did.

I tried a simple thing and an advanced thing. So the advanced one, I really miss this computer game I played growing up nonstop called Freddy Fish, and it had all these, like, mystery games, and Jake has played it, too. Freddie Fish rules. It's amazing. Highly underrated. Go watch YouTube videos about it. It was really high-quality kids entertainment.

It was good stuff. The way that I de-stressed the other day was watching a playthrough on YouTube. So good. But I missed it. I of course knew nothing could actually recreate it. But I was like, let me use this as my inspiration to, you know, have some nostalgia. So I asked it to create a single page app in a single HTML file called Undersea Mysteries with the goal of just solving like a simple mystery or puzzle. Puzzle is kind of its out because that's simpler to create. And I said, make me a pink cartoon starfish with a side. guide kick that's an ornery but lovable jellyfish, make the UI colorful 90s-esque. It should take place

into the sea. There should be like sea kelp, sunken pirate ships, treasure chest, stuff like that. So I was really... I really had a vision, you know what I mean? I was going off my nostalgia. So I thought for one minute and 38 seconds, here's the code. At first, it brought up this cute 90s-esque, like tie-dye game called Undersea Mysteries. It was exactly what I asked for. There were clues you had to click around and find, then you could open a treasure chest. There was a sunken pirate ship. There was a jellyfish that looked ornery but lovable. We had it all. The problem is I couldn't scroll down at all. I couldn't. This, what you're seeing right here is all I could see. It looks so good. You showed me the screenshot and like it gave me the Freddie Fish vibes. And I'm like,

oh my God, I want to play this. It was so, it was like torture because I could not scroll down. I could see it. And then it said, cannot preview your code and error occurred. I was like, no problem. Let's fix it. So it said, okay, do you want to fix it? I said, no, you fix it. So same thing that happened at every step. It was like, okay, here's what you should do. I'm like, no, you do it. So then it kept saying it was fixed. I'm like, great, I can't wait to play my game. Finally, we got to the point where I try to run the code. It says everything's fixed. And this happens. Just completely like. This is, so now it's just a text file that just says, it's just black and white with a bunch of, like, gunk. Right. So I don't know what this says. It just looks like word vomit. Everything has.

disappeared. Yep. It was just so, so sad. It was like a broken, just paragraph of text. And so I said, you know what, let me try something a little simpler. So I said, hey, can you give me like an interactive embroidery lesson? I famously, the other day, tried to order an embroidery kit for a beginner on Amazon. Oh, I've done that. And it was all AI generated the instructions. It said, like kill at one point. It was kind of creepy. Oh, boy. It was very... The embroidery needles are not that sharp. I know. It was a lot. So I said, okay, let me set away these instructions and let me just make an interactive training thing for myself on here. Great. It was successful. So I ran the code and it gave me a little lesson plan and it says, okay, click along the neon guide to lay even stitches. And so, I mean,

it's not like I can really learn because it's just asking me to make clicks, you know, 12 pixels apart. But, you know, the vibes were there, you know. It had tips at the bottom and then I could go on to different pages and do different types of stitches, although I'm just clicking, so it's not really that helpful. It is what I asked for and it was successful. So I think simpler stuff, great, but I was interested in the fact that it kept asking us to do our own coding. Yeah, it's so interesting that the assumption is that it will build it for you, but it keeps trying to throw things back to us, which it's interesting that it isn't able to tell

that we obviously do not know what we're doing. It talks to you like you understand the jargon. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't. Like, these are words. I'm digesting the words, but they're not processing in my brain. Like, the vibes were not there. Yeah. The vibe coding, vibes were not there.

So my experience was, I think, very similar to both of yours, where I, so I play a lot of chess, and I'm trying to learn some new openings for Black. And I was like, oh, it should just make me like an interactive lesson. That would be really cool. And so I gave it these instructions, and it went off. And, you know, it does the same thing as with UV where it's like, here's a bunch of code for HTML, open it up in your browser. I'm like, okay, I can manage this. But the problem is that chess boards don't load.

And so I keep going back and forth with it and back and forth in it. And he keeps going, I fix it. I fixed it. I fixed it. Don't worry, but I fixed it this time. And I'm like, you didn't fix it. And it turned out that it kept calling these chessboard files that were located that it believed were located on GitHub, but it did not have the right URL. And so I'm like, Chad Jibati, you have to understand. The thing you think is at this URL is not this URL. It is not loading. You need to figure out something else out. And it would be like, Jake, I have fixed it. I did not do that again. And I'm like, Chad Jad Jeebti, you did it again. It is not loading. And this goes on forever. So finally, I realize, okay, okay, I think I've got this. I'm like, Ched-U-T, I need you to build this entirely locally. Do not use these other files. Like, don't use this JSON thing.

It needs to be entirely local and figures it out. So it gets me something. So I'm going to share this so we can all see it. Okay, so here's the HTML version. This is the working version. Okay. So here it is. Look, it made a chessboard.

It's a chessboard. It made a chessboard. It made a chessboard. And it worked. I'm like, hey, this is pretty good. This is not so bad. So then I go back to it. And I'm like, all right, not bad, but this is like pretty simple.

Can we do some upgrades here? Because the main thing for me, if you look at this, it has a chess board. It looks good, but it's from White's point of view. And I'm learning black openings. And so, you know, if I'm playing chess online or on or in person, like the black side is going to be near me. And so I want to see it from Plax perspective. So I'm like, hey, chat, GPD, can you flip the board? And this begins a very, very lengthy series of back and forths.

I get kicked out of my GPT5 minutes, whatever. So it's a mixed of GP5, GPD4. But I'm going to show you what it has created now. And this is a very fancy version. It has a bunch of different openings, a bunch of different, like you can do different lines. I don't know if you guys are chess experts, but I'm just going to... Decidedly not. I'm going to click one button here.

And I'm going to ask if you guys can tell me what has gone wrong. with this latest version. Okay, so we're going to make the first move. Do you know what has gone wrong here? Well, white goes first. Yes, indeed. And ChatT has moved the black piece first. Oh, man.

And I have told ChatTBT this several times at this point, and it will not stop making black move first. The legal move. It is, yes. So it has gotten significantly more broken as I have tried to change literally anything. This reminds him like the robotic arms that like can't grasp something,

but they can like lift something that's like 500 pounds. Like they can't do the simplest thing. This is what I've found with all the chess stuff where it's like, okay, I'll just build you a giant app. It's really complicated. It's all these buttons.

I don't know how many pieces go on the board. I tried this with Claude too. And Claude, I'm like, hey, Claude, there are too many pawns. You have, you're putting extra pawns in the board and it's like, I'm so sorry, let me fix that. And then it just doesn't fix it. So it's, anyway, these are our adventures

in vibe coding. I think maybe the lesson is, you know, Sam Altman really pushed this as this is sort of a new era for vibe coding. It's going to be able to build all these sort of like cool interactive things for users. And that is, I think, a really interesting promise that we'd be able to just like visualize things in new ways and learn things in new ways. And I do really want to tap into that. But it feels pretty clear to me after this that it's like, it's not quite there. No, it feels like if you already know how to code, I think this is going to. be great for you because when it comes to the point where it gets something wrong, you're going to be

able to identify what it's doing wrong quickly and then be like, oh, you just, you just made a little baby mistake. I can do the thing. But if like the real true spirit of vibe coding is a dumb, a coding dumb, a coding dumb, like me being able to make an app that just works, I mean, I lost my mind trying to recreate air table. I mean, in fairness, I lose my mind just opening air table. So, you know, That's the standard experience there. All right, we've got to take a break. When we get back, we've got a new segment we're calling corporate shenanigans. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What-N-O-T-com slash sell. Welcome back. This week, we've seen some headline, grabbing announcements from Perplexity, Apple, and Elon Musk. Perplexity offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion. Apple is suing the movie theater chain, Apple Cinemas. Elon Musk says he's going to sue Apple for rigging the app store.

The question I'd like us all to consider for each of these news items is shenanigan or no? As in, is the company in question actually serious? Or is this just for the attention? So let's start at the top. Perplexity has put in an offer. Nobody asked them. Chrome is not for sale. But they have gone out and they said,

we're going to, we want to buy Google Chrome. We will pay $34.5 billion. Is this real? 100% of shenan again. It's so much higher than its own valuation. Like that's the kind of shenanigans it is. It's like Oprah level shenanigans level shenanigans. My favorite tweet about this was like,

like to buy Chrome, too. Someone will put up the money. Yeah, like they said that they had investors lined up that would front the money, but I mean, I think it's just a marketing stunt. It is. I mean, it's... Right. Perplexity is, I think, valued at $18 billion. So this is like double their valuation. They want to, you need two perplexities to buy Chrome at this price. Chrome also not for sale. It might be. It might be. There's a chance it'll be for sale. And never forget they try to buy TikTok, too. Right, right. Which is like six months ago. They tried to buy. They tried to try to buy TikTok. Again, I don't think anybody was asking. I mean, TikTok is maybe potentially plausibly. It's like it's in a quantum state of being for sale and not for sale.

So that one was- Perplexity will not be the buyer. Shrodinger's TikTok, it's Shrodinger's TikTok. It's for sale or not for sale at the same time. But this feels like, you know, that person that's always like, oh, I'll do it because there's no danger of them actually having to do the thing. That's so real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the worst case scenario is that they accidentally buy Chrome and have a good product. It's like someone at an auction that accidentally raises their paddle and then if they get picked, it's like, right on the movie. I did not know that was going for me.

Yeah. Perflexity, they have, I think, a fine product and they really like being in the news. And that seems to be what is going on here, right? Like, and it's funny, they have a browser. They have a browser based on chromium. It's perplexing. I see what I did there. Okay.

This one, I think we can move on from, I feel like we're all in agreement, fully a shenanigan, not serious. Okay. Item number two, Apple, the company that make computers, is suing Apple cinemas, a small movie theater chain that is now starting to expand nationally. Now, okay, I will tell you, when I have to be able to. first saw this, I was like, this is ludicrous. This is a shenanigan. I'm sorry.

I never heard of Apple Cinemas until this lawsuit. They're making it more popular. They are like, it's like that thing where you're drawing attention to the thing. He's doing a Hamilton where Hamilton is just like, I will tell everyone I had an affair, even though no one actually is my musical theater nerd coming out. Oh, actually, did you know it's coming out to theaters? I'm really excited. We got to go see it.

Yeah, we got to go see it. But, you know, he's just like, oh. nobody knows about this affair. Let me publish it for everyone and ruin my life. That vibe is what's happening here. Nobody freaking knew what Apple Cinemas was or was associating it with Apple. It's a shenanigan in that way. But I think they are very serious and they want it to happen because they're so intense about their brand.

So I feel like it's like a shenanigan to us all, but internally not because they really believe that this is like a threat to their brand. So they got really upset because Apple Cinemas started moving into, I believe it was San Francisco. And they're like, this is too close. They're like, you can't do this. They actually, they gnarced on Apple Cinemas. They called up Apple Cinemas' landlord and they're like, hey, I don't know if you know this, but they're kind of using our name. And the landlord did not respond. And they're like, we had to sue.

It was the only thing we could do. Calling the landlord, that's dark. That's, that's, this lawsuit is kind of ridiculous. They just go through a bunch of like Facebook comments of people being like, loll, they're going to get sued. Like, they're like, they're using that as evidence. This is their evidence.

They, at one point, they do a Google image search for Apple Cinema, which I will note, I will note the company's Apple Cinemas. They do a Google search for Apple Cinema. And they're like, look at this. Half the results are Apple Cinemas and half are the Apple Cinema display. We have a product with basically the same name. So they go, they paint this long, history of Apple. They're like, Apple has a grand history with cinema. We created final cut. We created

QuickTime. We streamed the trailer for the Phantom Menace on our website. And it's very, very silly. Jake, you should use that voice when you do this podcast. This is the entire podcast. I don't think I can maintain it. The Apple voice. So there is another wrinkles to this that I have to point out. So I'm going to read you a bunch of names. And I want you to tell me if you, if you know who originally owned these, right? So Apple Electronics, Apple Films, Apple Publishing, Apple Boutique, Apple Records, and Apple Studios.

Do you know these brands? No. Nope. These were originally companies that were part of Apple Core, which is the Beatles company. The Beatles started this to start Apple Records. and Apple Core, the Beatles company, was in a protracted trademark battle with Apple computers starting in the 70s because Apple computers came after Apple Core. And so Apple Core, right, originally a much more successful company because they were the Beatles.

Wow. They were doing very well. So Apple Corps sues Apple and, you know, they get into a tip about, about, they into a bit of a turf battle. and Apple Core, they've got a bunch going on. They've got movies. I don't know what their electronics are, but apparently they had some electronics. This all culminates in Apple computers,

eventually becoming a dramatically more successful company than Apple Core, and just buying out the trademarks to everything that Apple Core owns. So Apple, now I think they own the trademarks to Apple Core and license it back to the Beatles company. Oh, wow. You know what? They're just having trauma. Apple is having trauma.

They think Apple cinemas is going to blow up and then they're going to have to, they're going to get taken out. This is just trauma. So Apple, Apple owns basically Apple, Apple, preceding any word is my understanding at this point. Except Gwyneth Paltrow's kid. Crucially, I hope not. We don't know. We don't know. Do they own anything that has the word apple after it?

Like, do they own New York because it's the big apple? No, no. No, no, that's different. That's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just Apple in front of a word. Yeah, Apple in front of a word, I think they own. And so, okay, initially I saw this and I thought, this is ridiculous, leave this little movie theater chain alone.

The movie theater chain, I should say, they claim that their name comes from. They're originally going to open it in some area that had Apple in the name, and they're like, oh, it's just named after the area. But Apple owns that area. Oh, yeah. It was just Cooper King. So I initially thought it was a shenan again, but now Apple Cinema is like, yeah, we're going to open up like 100 theaters across the U.S. They're like, we're a top 25 theater chain, which admittedly is not saying very much. I think that maybe it's not a sheney and I think that it's, it feels a little mean, feels a little mean, but I feel like they maybe have to do this one.

They're serious about it for sure. Oh, they're definitely serious. What if they, what if Apple is thinking as an extension of Apple TV? plus that it wants to bring people into theaters, and therefore it's going to launch Apple Cinema Plus, in which case, then it's not a shenanigan because this is future plans that Apple Cinemas is foisting from them, in which case, this fan fiction, if this fan fiction is true,

maybe it's not a shenanigan. You're looking at the patents. Well, can I tell you something? They pulled some comments from reviews of Apple Cinemas, and people said it was gross. So I think they might be worried about it. They're worried about the brand reputation. for their future

cinematic efforts. When I go see Freakier Friday, I will not be going to Apple Cinemas, I guess. Well, I don't know of an Apple Cinemas in a 25-mile radius, so there's that. I guess I just won't fly to SF to see it. Okay, moving on to our next one,

which is also Apple-related. This is breaking news as a Thursday morning. V, do you want to break this one down for us? Yeah, so Apple has basically figured out a way to circumvent the ITC, the International Trade Commission import ban on the Apple Watch, which, you know, is a whole legal tit for tap that they had with Massimo, which is a medical tech device maker for blood oxygen monitoring. And so, you know, they went back and forth for a really long time, cut to December 2023. And, you know, the ITC has ruled that, you know, there's an import

ban on the Apple Watch because they have a patent infringement on the blood oxygen sensor, and that's why starting in January 2024 in the U.S. only, you can't buy an Apple, a newer Apple watch with the blood oxygen sensor feature enabled. Well, that's all different today. There's a software rollout update, and now you can have the blood oxygen monitoring feature, except, you know, the workaround is that the sensor on the watch collects the data. And it gets processed on the phone so that you can view the data only on your phone and not on your wrist. Right.

Okay. That's the workaround. So the hack they figured out is as long as the watch doesn't show you the blood oxygen sensor data, they can run it. Wow. So for the past year and a half, they have been selling watches with this sensor disabled, and now they're enabling it. Okay, the thing that I find ridiculous about all of this, they could Apple, Apple, has so much money. So much money.

They could just pay Massimo. Yeah, is it just like a principal thing? What's up with this? They don't want to pay. I think so, though, right? Like, I think they're like, listen, even if you are right about it. And look, Massimo, they might be right, they might not. It is going to continue to be litigated for a long time.

But I think that they're saying on principle, even if you're right, we will drag you to the ends of the earth and we will deplete your legal budget before we go. given. I think that's what's happening here. There's like multiple suits going on. So like initially, like there's this, this thing goes back like over a decade at this point where, you know, initially Apple went to Massimo. Allegedly, allegedly, Apple went to Massimo and they were like, hey, you know, we want to collab on blood oxygen. And then, you know, they poach a guy from, from Massimo who very subsequently soon leaves. And so then Massimo's like, hey, you stole our shit. this is the scientific, you know, legal terms that they're using. You stole our shit. And Apple was like,

no, we didn't. Here's the Apple Watch Series 6 with blood oxygen monitoring. And they were like, hey, hey. And so they filed a suit. And when that wasn't working, because it was taking too long, they went to the ITC because the whole, even the ITC thing is a workaround. Because if you, because of the supply chain and these devices being made in China, if you can't import them, ha, ha, you can't import them, pew, pew, pew. And then Apple was just like, well, first of all, we're going to exhaust every legal option humanly possible to prevent this ban, which is why, you know, these proceedings started in 2020. It didn't happen until the end of 2023, 2024. There was like a back and forth. The ban was paused. The ban was unpaused. And then Apple was like, fine, we'll just disable it then.

How sick do you think Apple's lawyers are of this situation? They are so sick of it. They are, so sick of it. And the irony is, is that Massimo then came out with its own smart watches, which look like the Apple Watch and measure blood oxygen. And then Apple was like, shenanigans. Petty to the nth degree. Yeah. So petty. Okay.

So what's our take on this one? Is the whole situation is sharing? Is it serious? I think it's serious, but it's ridiculous. Yeah, agreed. I think that's a fair take. I was going to say it's right down the center where it's, yeah. It's just ridiculous from this point.

Also, the patents expire in 2028, so this is very stupid. I also, the fact that they were able to remove a feature for a year and a half, maybe speaks to how important that feature is. I mean, I've written it all over up and down across the verge. It's not that important of a feature. It just isn't. It's rough. It's rough. That was once a flagship feature.

And they don't always pan out. No, they don't. Okay. final possible shenanigan. As soon as I say the first word, you're going to know where... Elon Musk says he is suing Apple for rigging the App Store. So I'm going to read this quote.

Here's Elon on Twitter. Or, sorry, apologies. This is Elon on X. He says, quote, Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach number one in the app store, which is an unequivocal,

antitrust violation, end quote. And so he starts by claiming that they're rigging their rankings, but then he kind of pivots very quickly and starts by claiming that actually what they're doing is rigging the App Store editorial because they have a bunch of curated sections where they'd be like our favorite apps, like summer hotness, whatever, like check out these AI things. And they don't feature GROC. Can you believe they won't feature GROC?

Can't believe it. You mean GROC, the one that unleashed, like unleashed sex bots? Very recently on the bad Rudy. Oh, no, why would ever family friendly Apple not put GROC in its editorial section where it's allowed to exercise opinions? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is here. My feeling is also like, these apps aren't even like allowed in the app store, right? Other apps that make deep fake nudes have been banned.

Right. They can't ban GROC because Elon is too big. of a figure. He's already getting special treatment. Also, like, his whole assertion that no other AI company can reach number one, didn't Deepseek reach number one? Right, right. Actually, there's a community note on his tweet about this being like, actually, Deep Seek. My favorite also is like Sam Altman and Elon getting into yet another X battle where Sam's

like, oh, well, have you ever put your own companies as special treatment? Have you ever giving your own company special treatment. I couldn't believe it. So, yeah, there's a lot. It feels like he saw what Tim Sweeney did with Epic, and he was like, I'm going to do that. That's going to work for me. Well, here's the thing. Let me just add a little note there.

Tim Sweeney actually filed a lawsuit, and Elon Musk at this point has not. He's never going to. He's just going to tweet about it. Which that is a bit of a pattern for him. So he got a little mad at Apple. He retweeted a bunch of people supporting him. Apple put out a statement later saying that the app store is, quote, designed to be fair and free of bias. I don't know what that means.

I mean, if it's editorial, it's, you know, like just by the function of the word editorial, there is some kind of opinion in there. But, like, to be fair. Yeah, they said it's like a combo of algorithms, you know, recommendations and opinion. So this is a shenanigan. It definitely is. Because he knows nothing's going to come of it. And he knows that, you know, if it really was number one, it would reach number one. This is nearly as much, this is like perhaps as much or more of a shenanigan than the

perplexity one. Definitely. Maybe more. I think it's more. It's more. This might be the ultimate one. Perplexity at least had some investors apparently lined up that maybe would front the money, you know?

Yeah. That's true. They took like an action to say like, yeah, we're not all total like BS, but like. Right. Elon just RT'd a couple of randos on Twitter. As always. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So I think what's our running total? Like two and a half shenanigans out of four? Yep. Okay. Okay. This is a big week for them. Apple somehow involved in most of them indirectly or directly.

It's not always their fault. Okay. We've got to take a break. When we get back, the Thunder round returns. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. complex and unprecedented the Spanish authorities are calling it. Antis delisembarco, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French,

have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. and we assess that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain, drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back with the Thunder Round,

aka the Lightning Round, colon, the Thunder Round, Colin Jake's version. Love it. As you all know, I've been on a power trip since Nilai Patel left on parental leave. The Lightning Round, as we know it, is done for. This is now The Thunder Round. I have given our producer Eric Gomez the Power of Thunder to make sure that we,

We keep moving and get through all the important stories that we want to talk about. So we're going to do five stories, five minutes each at 30 seconds. We're going to hear a rumble of thunder telling us to move along. If we keep going and get a little too far, we're going to hear thunder crash down. That's our moment to move along. All right. Let's get started. V.

You've got our first story today. Yeah. So my first story is Allison's Little Adventure, turning her LTE Apple Watch into her only device. So she's leaving her phone at home. She's going out and she's doing her adventures. And Allison is like annoyingly, and I say this with admiration, one of the funniest writers on staff. So just reading this was just delightful. And like, I was just like, she reached out to me and she's like, V, I have this crazy idea.

I was like, hit me. Hit me with it, girl. What are you going to do? She's like, what if I leave? My phone's at home and just live off of a smart watch. And I went, God bless. Let me know how it goes. I ain't that crazy.

let me see how it happens. And it happened like how I thought it would happen. But it tickled me because I think she and I are our beats continually like fuse and merge together because of all the ways that they're stuffing AI into our products. And I think she and I both have just like had a lot of conversations about like needing to step away from our devices in some some capacity. Like I had a story that came out a couple weeks ago about using brick, which is like this thing. that bricks your phone and I use it during TV time to get my attention back. And she's like, I want to be more present in the world. So I'm going to leave my phone at home and just use my

LTE watch for like connectivity. And of course that comes with its own trials and tribulations. Like she's like, oh shit, how do I call an Uber? How do you call an Uber without your phone? And like it was just a really cute meditation on like how reliant we are on these devices. Can you actually replace your phone with your smart watch in any capacity? So the way I know this kind of worked is that, so this is Allison Johnson, senior reviewer for The Verge, the way I know it worked is that on like Friday, I was saying something, I'm like, you know, I haven't heard much from Allison this week. What's she up to?

And someone was like, oh, yeah, she just like hasn't been using her phone all week for her job. And so she hasn't been talking to us. And I'm like, that was so effective. That worked. It worked. I just like, you know, like that, it was harder to get in touch with her. But I guess that was sort of the point. It was functional. She was dead. She did a good job. My favorite part was when she said she had visions of herself sitting at a table and a sidewalk cafe wearing a billowy skirt, but she doesn't own a billowy skirt. Like that was the energy she was going to give off.

Okay, so I have a question, and it's not for you, V, because I know the answer. Hayden, are you a smart watch person? No, I hate having things on my wrist. I don't like the feeling. I think it's because I do boxing as a workout. So a lot of people use smartwatches as like a workout tracker also. And I would always have to take it off because I box. So I feel like I just don't like feeling something on my wrist like that. I don't know.

I can deal with rings, but not big bracelets or anything like that. So it's been a while since I've been like a regular smartwatch person. I bought the original Apple Watch and then I immediately bought an Android phone. And it was just like I just like had this watch that I couldn't use. The thing that I think is really interesting about this is like there's this, sort of the conceit is, okay, the watch is less distracting than the phone. But I sort of wonder, and V, this is a question for you now, isn't the watch a little more annoying because it's literally physically on your wrist there at all times and it's shaking around trying to alert you to everything? That almost seems more distracting. It can be more distracting, especially when you wear to any given point in time.

and they have different notification settings just because, like... Quick wearable check. I think there's three on you today. There's three on me today. Well, there's three on me today and two more at my desk because they're glasses.

So, you know, that's the whole thing. But yeah, I do get buzzes a lot and especially on this garment that I'm testing at the moment because it's a little less discerning with what notifications I get. So it's just like, they texted you. They texted you.

They texted you. And like, they buzz. And I can't. answer this as an objective third party, because whenever I'm with someone who has an Apple watch or a smart watch, you know, it makes me nervous because they're always looking at their wrist. And I'm like, oh, is it, am I boring or is it time to go? Obviously, it's just they're getting a text and they're like, oh, sorry. But, you know, it can be intense. It's definitely a social queue for sure where, like, I'm very cognizant of it of just, like, things buzzing and being

like, mm-hmm. Then going back down, looking at my wrist, like, I, I do think it's a different kind of distraction. Like with my phone, if I do need to, like if I'm sitting down for dinner with my wife, like I will put my phone somewhere else so that it's not distracting me. Because like, listen, I love you all, but I got a lot of slack pings, all right?

Like, they do not stop. And if it's on my person, if I know it's buzzed, then there's just like, there's always that tension in my mind where I'm like, I got to find out what this is, I got to find out if it's important. Sometimes it's just the weather. Sometimes it's just telling me it's going to rain, and I did not need to see that.

And I do like that I can just, like, take my phone out of my pocket and put it somewhere else. I'm with the watch. You're sort of like... That's why you've got to get the flippy flip. Dismiss that. I do it all the time. So you're just eating and being like flinging your arm around. Yeah, that's not distracting at all.

Okay. All right, Hayden, you're up. Okay, so mine is how doctors are getting worse at detecting cancer after they rely on AI. So really scary and sad. Basically, a new study just published this. this week found that doctors who usually use AI to detect cancer and colonoscopies, now, when it's taken away from them, they got way worth at detecting cancer than they were before they ever used AI because they basically got lazy. Like their brains were used to just relying on AI and kind of double checking it. And then even with all their training, when you take the AI away, they became way worse.

I think six percentage points worse. Oh, that's a little horrifying to me. That's not good. That's very upsetting. That's, you know, yeah, they found like across countries, Poland. The researchers came from Poland, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and Japan. They looked at four medical centers in Poland that were part of a trial program, you know, using AI and colonoscopies.

And, yeah, basically these doctors are just going to be SOL for whenever they stop using AI. This is really interesting because I feel like there's been so much like fear and concern. Like, AI is going to make you dumber. A.I. is going to make you dumber. And I've been, like, trying to grapple with this. it's like, okay, I don't, I don't know how to use the Dewey Decimal System, right? I don't know how to go find a book and then look in the glossary and find the page and, you know, read the context and figure out, right, I'm not reading as much because I'm just

going to Google. And I'm, right, and Google's just giving me, and then I read a website that's been written for me really nicely. So like, okay, am I dumber because I use Google instead of going to a library, maybe a little bit? And so I'm like, okay, are we kind of overreaction with some of this AI stuff? But this is, this is concerning to me. I think it's like GPS, right?

Like if you always use GPS on your car and then you just never, like, I'm calling out my spouse here, like they don't know how to get to a place that's five minutes away because they always have GPS. So they only put GPS and when the car play doesn't work. And it's five minutes away. You've driven there a million times. They don't know how to get there. That's me. Oh, yeah. No, not a chance.

I think that's kind of analogous to what's happening here with the doctor. So, like, even you know how to drive. You could probably do it on your own, but definitely. And you also, I think it's also like a thing when I found in some recent reporting I did on a Google Health, like medical AI hallucination, that people that double check AI's work also get a little bit lazy and it's just kind of human nature. If something's usually right, you're going to not find the discrepancies or the errors as much because you're like, oh, it's probably right.

And you're usually not going to, you know, pinpoint when it's right. wrong. And so I think it's kind of the same thing. It's like if your brain is used to relying on something, something that's usually right, you're just going to get worse at doing it on your own, and you're going to get worse at identifying when it's wrong, probably. Yeah, Hayden, I thought this piece you wrote, I think it was last week, was fascinating, where you found that, what was it, a Google research paper had merged the name of two different areas of the brain, and kind of no one noticed. Exactly. It had more than 50 authors on it, and they also had doctor. look at it before they published it. It was like the debut research paper for Google's

healthcare AI model, which they were positioning to doctors as, you know, a good way to double check things, you know, flag things, especially things missed by radiologists. And yeah, I mean, it made up a body part. Google said it was just a misspelling, but it was conflating essentially two different areas of the brain. And if you did have an abnormality or a stroke in one of those two areas, it would be treated differently from the other. So, I mean, it is a problem. If, you know, especially like we just said, if you're a doctor reading this and you're probably not going to find the error just like they didn't in the actual research paper, you may skip over it and maybe even mistreat the actual thing. The term sounded real. Basilar ganglia. That sounds real

because there is like a basilar thing and a ganglia in your brain. So, well, and this is what I thought was so interesting about that, where, you know, you have people in the story saying, like, oh, it's like a common typo. Like, people figure it out. But I do think, like, okay, sure. Maybe they would have figured it out. But the turn is if they get used to not checking, then you get into a problem.

And this study sort of emphasizes that where it's like, oh, like, in fact, they are getting worse at it. In fact, that could make medical care worse. And so, like, that gets a little concerning. Listen, chat GPT-5 is better at health care. So says Sam Holtman. Yeah, and healthcare, coding, it's just telling you to do the healthcare yourself. It's just, it's kind of, I'm interested in how this affects people with health anxiety, because

basically it said, oh, it's better at answering your questions about your condition and telling you what it might be. Hello, I have health anxiety. It's not good. It's bad. It's going to be interesting, for sure. Okay, next story. AOL is shutting down after.

34 years. AOL dial-up, I should say. A-WL dial-up is done after three decades. RIP. I can hear it in my head. It's beautiful, beautiful noise in retrospect. I apparently, according to the 2023 U.S. Census, there are currently, there were around 160,000 people who still had dial-up internet, which is sort of... It's so slow. What? What are they're expecting? I don't, I want to know what they're paying.

lives, you know? Right, this is the real question. What are they doing with it? You can't load anything on that internet right now. They're definitely just looking at like their AOL inbox and maybe like the MSN homepage. That's what I think. Is it? Yahoo.

They use Yahoo. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Actually, can I say it when I looked up the Apple Corps settlement with Apple Inc. From 2007, the press release, the spokesperson for Apple Quartz, the spokesperson for Apple Quartz, AOL email address. This is 2007, right? A.

AOL is still around. You still see, I haven't seen an AOL email address in a while. You still get the Yahoo's. You still get the MSN, not so much. That sound, though, is forever in my head. Yeah. Maybe it'll become cool to have an AOL email address,

you know, like it's a nostalgia thing. I don't know, I could see that happening. Is that the, like, digicam of emails? You're like, oh, Gmail is for the millennials. We got to, we're going to, like, buy old AOL addresses. Oh, my God. Especially since, like, the inbox, isn't unlimited.

So you actually, it's going to be like a mindfulness thing where they're just like, oh, you only have 50 emails that you can have any given point in time. Again, they're probably so zen. Were you both AOL dial up users back in the day? Yeah, yeah, same.

And it's, it's, I mean, I barely remember it at this point. I remember it, like, it was an app, though. It was like an app that you enter into. It was just like this contained experience. There's just like sound bites that I remember. One, there's the connecting thing for the dial. But then also, you got mail.

Oh, my God. And, like, welcome to AOL or something like that and just, like, what the homepage looked like. That was my Neopats era. Oh, my God, that was mine, too. Going to the free omelet every day. Oh, my gosh. That was so good. My shop song was an ABA song.

So good. Neopats still going strong, though. It is? I tried to log in sometime in the past year, and they deleted my account. Oh, my gosh. My poor gal alerts. They're all gone. All right.

AOL, you had a run that lasted way, way longer than it should have. Thank you for getting us online and for imprinting that terrible noise in a whole of our heads. I hear it in my dream. As we should, next week on the Thunder round, we're replacing the thunder with the screech. Oh, my gosh. Let's all make our ringtones. That sound. Or our phone alarms.

You know, that will really help us, you know, reduce our desire to be near our phone. If they were like blaring that noise all the time. 100%. Oh, God. Okay. V, what have you got for us? We have the pebble time too because I got a little email from Eric Mikikovsky, who is the core devices CEO and co-founder of the pebble watches. And he's just like, we've got a design reveal, the pebble time too.

And because pebble is pebble again. Very recently they got the name back because they had had to rebrand as core devices. So it was going to be the core time too. on the chord two duo and like everyone was making Intel chip jokes but it's back to being Pebble and it's really, I brought this one up because we knew Pebble was coming back

we knew that Pebble just had these diehard community fans for open source smart watching and it was just interesting because in the comments on this there seemed to be like a war of ideologies of people who were like yes finally the pebble has returned

and my life is complete again I read it in that those voices every single of one of the pebble die hearts because for the last decade they've been in my DMs going Nothing will ever replace my pebble. I love it so much. And then there are other people going just like, I don't know, man. I need LTE on my smart watch. I need NFC on my smart watch. I need it to do modern things. And like those are very purposefully not on the pebble time too. Like it's got RGB lighting. It's got a really retro design. It's got e-paper as its display. It kind of feels like one of those dumb phone devices, but for your smartwatch, it's very retro. It's just going to do the simplistic, minimalistic things.

And it was interesting waiting into the comments to see people who are just like, yes, Pebble! And then other people going like, it's ugly. Why would you do this? Like, we're beyond this point. And I was just like, wow, it's so wild just watching this play out in the comments. Well, I also suspect that, like, there's a little. There's a real degree to which if anybody thought that this was a real threat to the smart watch market, this would not have been allowed to happen. Like literally would not have been.

No. Google owned all of this. Yeah, Google legit was just like, have that. Right. Go, have fun. Google was like, if it makes you happy. Literally. Right?

Like Google makes the Pixel Watch, right? That thing's not flying off store a shell. It's a lovely smart watch. flying off store shelves. I was a great smart watch. And even they are like, yeah, you can compete with us. It's fine. That's not.

The opposite of the Apple and Apple Cinemas thing. Yes, yes, yes. It's literally like, oh, you guys want your little pebble back. Have fun. Come on in and compete. Come on in. Go in. But it is nice, right?

I mean, this is sort of like a little bit playing off of what Allison did where it's like, this is going even simpler. This is like, the watch is not going to bug you. No. Like, you get your notifications. You can do a little bit of stuff. step tracking, there's a compass in there, have that, do what you will. There's a little community that's been like keeping the pebble going, you know, during the dark ages where there was no

support and whatnot. Just a little community of rag-tag pebblers going and keeping this thing alive and popping into every single smart watch review that I've written over the last however many years going, I miss my pebble. I miss my pebble. You know, like that just like that kind of thing. It was a nice watch. And I think there's also, it is like the ethos of it, right? Yeah. Because there's, I don't think there's anything else quite like it in like, you know, mainstream consumer technology that's as like tinker or friendly. It's a cute watch, a cute name. And also just like, you know, smart watches, and I've written this time and time again,

they kind of feel like the vanguards of Waldgarten OS's because they're there for you to stay stuck to a particular phone. So everything is super siloed. So for Pubble to be back out here and they're like, hey, all, open source, let's have fun. Yolo, let's go. Like, it's just nice to have that vibe come back at a time where, like, smartwatches as a whole are super duper siloed. And that's why I have to carry around three fucking songs. No, I completely agree.

And it's, I mean, it's really funny. Like, this is like an updated version of the Pebble Time 2. Was that what the original name was? It was the Pebble Time. Oh, so this is actually a sequel now. It still looks mostly the same, but like a little refined. And as far as I'm where, the specs, like, are barely changing, right? It's mostly the same device, mostly the same feature set as it was 10 years ago.

Yep. Whits. There's like no other device you could be like. I don't know. If people were like iPhone 5, here it. Honestly, okay, I'm saying this. I might buy that. The iPhone 5 looked really good.

It was a good phone. Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also missed the button, you know. That's true. This is where it's going to go. It's like the digit cam people are going to demand we go backwards. Yeah.

All right. The Pebble Time, it's supposedly shipping this summer. It's supposedly shipping this year. This year, this year is now this year. Okay. It's coming sometime. Yeah. Okay. Very exciting days for the Pebble community. Y'all have been waiting. It's a good moment. Okay. Hayden. So Addy did a great piece this week on how chatbots aren't divulging their secrets. They're not like an Oracle. When you ask it a question about how it works, its inner workings, why it was banned from something like GROC was, or why it's responding

a certain way, what its secret prompts are. Most of the time, it's not unveiling secrets of its inner workings in its system. It's just kind of making something up because that's what it wants to do. It wants to make you happy. It wants to answer your question. It's searching the web and just becoming a pattern generator and, you know, picking the next most logical word. Right. So this GROC thing, GROC like briefly got banned from X, which is... And blue sky. And blue sky. And blue First off, I cannot believe Grock was allowed on blue sky for a second. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. So it got banned on X for mysterious reasons, even though it seems to be the main feature on X these days.

And then people started asking it why it was banned. And they were just like, oh, okay, well, Greg, if you say so. But it had like a bunch of different explanations. Yeah, like one was that it's stated that Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza. And then another one said it was content refinements by XAI. And then another one said, oh, it's because I identified an individual and adult content. So basically, I ran the gamut. Like, no one knew why I was really banned.

And it didn't know either. It's, I mean, this, it makes so much sense, right? You're like, why couldn't I ask the chatbot about itself? But I think this is, like, just at an even more basic level, I don't even think you can ask a chat about what model it is. Like, it doesn't even always know. It doesn't. I did ask chat GPT5 today.

Like, what's the difference between the old you and new you? and it did give me some examples of like what it can do better, but then I was just like, I don't know, I still bully you pretty hard. But this is the thing. It's still basing it off of like what it can read. Right. Like it read the blog post. Yeah, right, right.

It just knows the exact same thing that you can read. And I think that a lot of times, you know, again, this is a human nature thing of us, like personifying things or whatever. But, you know, on TikTok I see a lot of trends of people like treating chatbots like an oracle. They're like, oh, I asked when the world was going to end and it said this. Okay, like, it's just reading a random Reddit comment and just putting that out there. Or saying, like, you know, out of everything I've ever told you, what do you think is next for this company or whatever? I mean, there's basically people, it is good at finding patterns, but it doesn't know the future.

And it doesn't know, like, I don't know. I mean, unless you can find out on the Internet, it's not going to tell you. Besides, sometimes you can get it to unveil some of its system prompts or its secret hidden instructions. But I mean, that's it. So that's what's so tricky, though, right? I think particularly when the chatbots first started coming out, and I think this happened on Bing, where, right, I think most of the chatbots are given instructions. You would think that this would be some, like, fancy code of constraints on how these things operate. But there's actually just, like, some engineers are just like, be nice to the user, give brief responses.

And it's just like English language, plain text stuff. and they kind of just like put that at the top of the chat and hide it. And so there have been these instances where people will figure out that, okay, if you do the right things, we say it, the chatbot will reveal some of its prompts to you, which lets you figure out how it's been designed to operate. And so there are like very occasionally these secrets you can divine. Yes, only about the system prompt.

And that's it though, right? It's extremely limited. And then because of this, I think, I mean, it's probably for a lot. of reasons that are mostly related to human psychology, but I think this sort of lends credence to it, people sort of think, okay, anything it says, anything it says about itself is going to be true, and you just, you can't believe it. It's actually, it probably even knows less if it's like a breaking news scenario. Right, exactly.

And it's also hard because, yeah, I mean, the fact that it can find patterns in, like, economic conditions or, like, travel patterns, all these patterns that it finds, people think that it can also find patterns in, like, what's going to happen in the future or what's happened in the past. And it's very, it's just hard because I think, you know, it's really good at something and it's really bad at others. And, you know, we have to remember what it's bad at. Yes. But it speaks so authoritatively. So it's hard to. It's gaslighting us. It's, I mean, it just says things confidently. And so if you can't suss what it is or it's really hard to remember what it is and it isn't good at for the average person, I think. Just.

There's also, if you trace this far enough, I think this is how you start to get to some of those stories where people are like, it told me I could run through a wall. And so I ran at the wall. And it's like, no, no, no, no, like, please, like, you have to approach these things with common sense. And I think very, in complete fairness, the fact that the bot can't explain to you what it is doing is really confusing, especially when you have, you have these reasoning models and these like, quote, unquote, thinking models, they'll explain their reasoning. And it looks really, really like, intelligent and sensible. And for it then to be like just totally, I have no idea what model I am.

I just have to make that up. But I don't know why I acted this way. So I asked how many R's were in strawberry. It said three, which is correct. But then it said there are three R's in strawberry. But you know what? It can't get right is the number of ours in any U.S. state. And it keeps labeling maps incorrectly too.

It's great. One day, one day, maybe get a second official opinion on your medical information, always every day get second medical. Just don't listen to change. And make sure that doctor is not using AI. That's it for the Vergecast. If you like what we do here, the best way to support us

is to buy a subscription to Theverge at theverge.com. We'd love to hear your questions and feedback. Let us know what you want to hear us talk about this summer. Email us at vergecast at Vurge.com or give us a call 866 Verge11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media podcast. Network. Our show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Marina. Jen Toey has a great episode coming up on Tuesday. It's about whether we can make

Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons a real thing. See you next week.