TRASHFUTURE - FBI Anime Girlfriend Chatbot feat. Paris Marx

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

This week, we're speaking with Paris Marx (@parismarx) of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast about recent developments in AI--the grift moving from web 3.0 to artificial intelligence, the idea that anyth...ing is good enough so long as it automates people out of a job, and much more. Hope you enjoy!   Check out Tech Won't Save Us here: https://techwontsave.us Get the whole episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/78137106 *LONDON LIVE SHOW ALERT* See Trashfuture live in London on February 20 featuring special guest Nish Kumar! Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trashfuture-live-podcast-with-nish-kumar-tickets-528472574697 *BERLIN LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're also doing a show on March 11 in Berlin! Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trashfuture-live-in-berlin-tickets-525728156067 *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I want to talk about TELUS, T-E-L-L-U-S. It's a startup. It's a fintech. I didn't want to talk about it with Joe the other day, so I've saved it for this week. What is the TELUS company in Canada? Hello! I was going to say, no it is not. It is a fintech company in the USA. So, as our guest, Paris, you get first guess. Oh, damn. Okay, it's a fintech company. I need to guess what it does. Oh, yeah. TELUS. Is it one of those online survey companies that pays you for surveys? No, that's a bad guess.
Starting point is 00:00:35 No, not correct. Not really what a fintech would do. Alice. Okay, what's the worst thing I can think of? The podcast that is rude to a guest once it becomes friends with him. Yeah. It's a way of automating or offshoring your compliance operations. So, all of your reporting requirements or whatever, it just does those for them and it doesn't very poorly. No, that actually sounds like a pretty good business. TM, you can't do it. So, it's like I've been doing this like twice a week for like multiple years. Hussein, TELUS. And you know what? I'm going to give you the first line of the copy.
Starting point is 00:01:10 Okay, this might ruin what I was going to say, but I won't give it to you. Okay, I mean, it's up to you. I had two ideas for it. Number one, an American version of William TEL. Question mark. Don't really know what that's about. Number two, a fintech has invented an anime girl because they want to encourage people to tell the anime girl their crimes. And so, it's a surveillance bot, but yeah, it knows its audience well. And the end can extort them. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:01:37 Well, that's a good idea. No. Yeah, that's a million dollar patent pending. The chat bot that like mirandizes you first. Every single fucking griper on the internet would confess every possible crime. I know. When I was thinking, I was just like, fuck, this is actually a very good idea. Even if it does serve like very bad purposes. TM. You don't have to talk to me. You are allowed a lawyer.
Starting point is 00:02:04 If you can't afford a lawyer, one will be like assigned to you. Yeah, we're going to get the do not paper. You mean about the pipe bombs I planted? Yeah, sure. An anime girl that understands you, understands you in a better way than everyone else. Okay. I'm going to give you another hint. And then I'm going to start going into it. It's tell us you can turn your savings into passive income and earn between 3.95 and 5.5% APY.
Starting point is 00:02:28 That's very high. That's very high. Yeah. Starting again with Paris. It can't be a crypto scam. We're already past that. No, not crypto. Not crypto.
Starting point is 00:02:38 It's not crypto. Oh, fuck. Is it going to invest your shit using AI? Not AI, but it does invest your shit. Hussein, last guess before I reveal. Okay. It won't invest your shit, but it will invest your semen somehow. Everyone's into semen retention.
Starting point is 00:02:52 It has something to do with semen retention and adding monetary value to that. Tell us about not coming. No, no. So you can earn 3.95 to 5.5% APY. That's up to 22 times the average savings account. Asterisk. Asterisk. All while keeping your cash out of the markets.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Asterisk, asterisk. Does it buy up your old NFTs? I'm sensing an architectural shape. Is that Sam Bankman Fried's new startup from his house arrest or whatever he's in right now? No, but it was invested in by Andreessen Horowitz. Here it is. Close enough.
Starting point is 00:03:26 When you deposit your money into your TELUS savings account, we supercharge your returns with interest generated by real estate. Earnings? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. This is the thing that you invest all your money in and then you look at the calendar and it's like January 1st, 1929.
Starting point is 00:03:46 Don't do this. Do not do this. You can't. Oh, this is such a horrible idea on so many levels. The real estate in the US is owned by, as we've talked about now, two hedge funds at this point. That's the level of consolidation it's on and you're going to get a piece of that moments before the whole thing collapses due to one or other Jenga piece we pull out and it's
Starting point is 00:04:17 going to just eat your savings. Not even money you put aside to invest, just like your own, oh, fuck, this is terrible. Yeah. That's pretty much the size of it. You more or less nailed it. This is this. Oh, my God, at least in the olden days, right? At least in the olden days when you were about to lose all of your money on land, it would
Starting point is 00:04:42 be because they had defrauded you about the state of the land. They would be like, oh, you can buy a bunch of, you know, you know, windward land on Florida and it turns out that it's all swamps or whatever and it's worthless and now you're bankrupt. Now it's just like, oh, yeah, you can buy the subdivisions, you can buy the McMansions or, you know, some sort of like investment instrument that controls a part of them. You're still just as fucked. It's just in a more sort of baroque way.
Starting point is 00:05:12 That's right. So your earnings are paid to you daily and your money can be pulled out at any time. And then this is where it does one of the most annoying things I've seen a startup do in a while where it's like the small print happens frequently as you scroll through their page with like little emojis and stuff, but it says, friendly reminder that TELUS is a financial technology company and not a bank. We hate to sound like a broken record, but we are not a bank, we are a financial technology company.
Starting point is 00:05:37 Yeah, your savings are not guaranteed by anyone to any value at any time. In years and years, Rory Keneer was just using this as his savings. The way that this works, right, the way that this will be a success for you is if you have detailed insider knowledge as to the exact moment at which the American housing market will crash, if you have that, then you can make a lot of money with this. However, that would be illegal. So you have no way of knowing that. What you're essentially entering is a kind of lottery of when will the American housing
Starting point is 00:06:12 market crash? So well, interestingly, you might say that, Alice, because it says actually it's built for humans, but backed by real assets. So it's not built for cats or chinchillas or anything, it's for humans. So on the one hand, you're telling me this is like investing all of my savings in lottery tickets, but on the other, you're telling me that it's built for me as a human. And as a human, I love when things are built for me as a human. I also did go to their FAQs page and you have sort of...
Starting point is 00:06:43 I got some fucking Qs I want to A these Fs. I'm very frequent. So the first frequently asked question is, is TELUS FDIC insured? No. No. No, it is not. We're here for your money, not the bank's money. Your money is not insured by the federal government.
Starting point is 00:07:01 You are going to lose a dime. Yeah, you are going to lose a lot of dimes, many dimes. So they say, with TELUS, your money is always at hands-reach. Every dollar you deposit is backed by real assets, not stocks or crypto, but American housing loans. Cool. It's really secure. If you have the memory of a goldfish, if you don't recall anything bad that has ever happened
Starting point is 00:07:23 to financial instruments based on American homes. No one's defaulting on those as interest rates go up. No. I have to tell you all, this gets so much better. So it says, here's another great sentence you want to read on your savings accounts webpage. To date, TELUS has met every payment obligation and our expert customer service team is to here to assist you when you need to speak with a person.
Starting point is 00:07:48 Yeah, I mean, the housing market's fine-ish now. So yeah, why wouldn't it? It's like, as I sort of sail into the Category 5 hurricane, every wave that has hit this boat has gone under the hull. It's fine. And if you need to make a panicked call to someone, there is someone who will take that call. So cool.
Starting point is 00:08:15 I'm going to make girls that want you to also admit your crimes. This is from TechCrunch. CFWNoFBIGF. This is from TechCrunch, an article about... It's a great source for startups, it really is. You could represent a lot of what is written in TechCrunch articles with a little more sarcastic language and it would make about as much sense. So this is from TechCrunch.
Starting point is 00:08:43 With mortgage interest rates having more than doubled since one year ago, one might think this is not the best time to be a digital mortgage lender doubling as a savings account. Yeah, one might. Because like I said, if you remember, it doesn't make the return through like landlording. It's not a real estate investment trust. It makes the return through loans to homeowners. But co-founder Rocky Lee believes his company's unique business model sets it apart from other lenders.
Starting point is 00:09:09 Number one, the company has exclusively a very niche real estate offering, which is always a good sign. It's a very unique business model in the same way that walking around holding a landmine is a unique business model. It's like, yeah, but it's kind of unique for a reason in that it's potentially quite self-destructive. So here's the business model. This is Rocky Lee.
Starting point is 00:09:33 The home that tell us borrowers buy is typically not a starter home. What they are seeking is something called a super jumbo, which is designed for people who don't have a ready-to-use mortgage solution for the problem that they face. And here I thought a super jumbo was like on the secret 7-Eleven menu. What's that? Yeah, it's a mortgage. You go to a 7-Eleven, you order a super jumbo, then they give you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then someone else makes 5% interest presumably forever.
Starting point is 00:10:01 So I'd like for animal stuff. So what you're saying is people who find it difficult to get a conventional, trad-stated conservative mortgage, because they're likely to default on it in the estimation of those mortgage lenders. It targets existing homeowners who wish to upgrade to larger homes without selling the homes they live in now, which makes it difficult for them to get approved for loans by traditional mortgage lenders. Yeah, so wait, wait, wait, this isn't just homes that are going to get foreclosed on.
Starting point is 00:10:34 This is second homes that are going to get foreclosed on. And it's entirely based on jet ski dealership MAGA chuds who decide that now, as the economy gets worse, is the time to really stick it to Joe Brandon and buy that real estate in Florida. So the way I see it, just from reading the copy here, it's number one. It's usually about 2% higher than a standard mortgage, so they're charging a premium. And then they say, but it's fine, because usually, once you own the second home, you can then mortgage that to close out your super jumbo.
Starting point is 00:11:12 And again, this seems to be one of those things that only works so long as everything can keep moving. And we all know that everything keeps moving. Always.

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