TRASHFUTURE - Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Digital Souls

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

There may be disruptions in the free-money-forever ecosystem of the tech industry, but that hasn’t stopped new ideas springing forth. For example: what if we made an AI chatbot but it had feelings? And we made it do spreadsheet-factory jobs? This is one of the propositions from a new startup we’ve uncovered called–and this is not a joke–Digital Souls. If you’re looking for a UK strike fund to donate to, here’s one we’ve supported: https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/national-dispute-fund/ If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *MILO ALERT* Here are links to see Milo’s upcoming standup shows: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *AUSTRALIA ALERT* We are going to tour Australia in November, and there are tickets available for shows in Sydney: https://musicboozeco.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/3213de46-cef7-49c4-abcb-c9bdf4bcb61f  Melbourne https://tccinc.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/75729 and Brisbane https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/trashfuture-live-in-brisbane-additional-show-tickets-396915263237.  *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/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello Trash Tutor listeners. Just a quick heads up before this episode starts. We've got a bunch of live shows going on For which there are tickets available. Milo is at Edinburgh Fringe And there's a link in these show notes to his show, which is going on basically every day this month Additionally for our Australia tour. We now have tickets available for the Sydney show that is on November 10th It's at the great club in Merrickville. There is a link in the show notes We'll be appearing with a friend of the show special guest Tom Walker Additionally, there are still about 30 tickets left for the second night in Melbourne There's also a link in the show notes for that and hopefully in the next week or so

I should have a link up for you to purchase tickets for our show in Canberra That'll be on the night of the 15th of November. So yes, Australian fans We are in fact inbound in about a hundred days. So if you want to see us there Tickets are available. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy this episode Hello and welcome to this free episode of TF. It's the free one Yes, that's right Milo's still not back. We've just got a sound board of all the stuff. He says that's right I think this is the first time I've dialed in for an episode where Riley's been in the studio So I'm getting the experience of looking through the studio webcam for the first time ever. And how is that? It's great

It makes you look so small. You can you can see the like big standee of Elon Musk covered in stickers He's normally behind me. Yeah, don't don't don't give them a peek behind the curtain This that's the reason the curtain is there keep the curtain behind the curtain you hogs. However a fond hello from us to you On on on this fine day I got a question though to my friends. Oh, hmm. We're back in the trad kingdom. What are our jobs? Oh, God this threads. I I hated it less when it was the original What's your job and the sort of like yoghurt advert commune? But now now it's back in this Byzantine trad cast with combination

What what what would your job be in the trad kingdom? Yeah, the kingdom of tradliness. Yeah, that's right. I mean my answer was Selenium all of us would be Chels What's it? What's a chill like a surf? Okay, we would have no thiefs. We would have like no lands. We got no thieves We would be like oaths, we would be peasants. We would be surfs. Okay. Yeah All castes are the oaths of the of the Maybe we could be like traveling oaths Maybe that's our role in like the trad kingdom after the Republicans get everything they want and like bring bring out oath

Wears to every passing settlement. That's right. Oh, you know, I think I personally, you know, I think There's a company of lens grinders in Milan that thinks that you know, they can give Christendom access to the heavens And you know, we could release some pamphlets that debunk their outlandish claims You would be a good pamphlet here, that's true Exactly, it depends. Yeah, I mean if we're if we're talking like 15, you know It is is 1500s as far too early modern to be trad. Yeah. Yeah Well, the thing is it would it would be like very anachronistic because the trad kingdom is

Like 2030s United States but run on a sort of like ren fair basis now that all of the like Social more is of the of the Middle Ages of the early modern period have been restored. So yeah You would still be like a traveling oath, but you you would be a traveling oath working on Like, you know, working in a Tesla Gigafactory or whatever. Yeah, traveling Jersey shore. Oh, you say we're a subject So we're gonna bring back like the big pants or the taunts yours or whatever. Yeah, yeah But your job will still be Posting essentially, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's every everyone Everyone just is annoyed that I won't shut up about how much I like jigs. I'm a jig purist

Just obsessed with this one coaching in in Brandenburg. That's those great jigs That's correct. It was really funny though because if you remember the original sort of Communist thread that was like, what was your job and then come what would your job in the commune be all of the answers to that were cop, right because That's just how communists. We just love to become police officers It happens to us at a certain stage in our lives And so if you ask any communists the question, what will your job be after the revolution? It's Cop in this case, they asked a bunch of like near reactionary trads

What their ideal job would be and it was like all of them were like, I'd probably be like a you know An eminence grease a power behind the throne a trusted advisor of the king something like that Yeah, look the cake the king needs someone who's read the Wikipedia page for Prince Machiavelli Yeah, no one's like I'd be making horseshoes No, I yeah, I did a bit of research for this question and I think I came up with like two good answers The first is that I do not dream of labor The second so I don't have a dream job But the second is if I'm forced to participate in medieval capitalism, then I would like the job of the gong farmer

Ah, remember the gong farmer was hard. That's right. I feel like yeah I feel like you know, there's a certain nobility with having a job where like your job is to pick up poo and to organize the poo and to do so in with silence and with the nobility of like maintaining some type of like excrement order in the kingdom And the gong farmer had a whole bird. Yeah, and also like based on like these kind of little articles that I read on like In preparation for this question apparently the gong father was like the gong farmer There's a good bit

Yeah, the gong farmers like were actually like fairly well respected not well paid but well respected among Medieval sizes, so they're like nurses badly paid but well respected. Yeah, exactly Interestingly, did you know that they actually they got the king's pleasure barge to do to do circles in the Thames The coachman's guild are getting it again a pay rise and yet the gong farmers are still on 14 shillings a week Look if you want to ask how how pray tell are we all going to find our various dream jobs as traveling churls and gong farmers and the You know the someone who's just you know, I killed at the king's pleasure on his bar Yeah, a benevolent sort of philosopher advisers all of this. Yeah. Yeah, it's that remember how

Last week we were slightly concerned that the we were going to cause a recession because price controls are You know, yeah, yeah, we're not just cause a recession because a recession on purpose very that would like lower inflation Yeah, well the Bank of England monetary policy committee met and they looked at the big red button that said Warning will cause recession do not push and brother. They pushed it. Oh, no One of those little buttons that has the like clear plastic shield on the top Do you have to flip up to them have to like turn keys simultaneously? Yeah, yeah, they they decided I fully just pressed it. They pressed the button

What what that means is they've raised borrowing rates by like point five percent I think rather than point two five percent it sounds like a very small difference But basically what that means is they're just going to chase inflation up with higher borrowing costs More or less forever and have determined that yes, this is going to put the economy into a recession It's going to last about as long as the recession in 2008 So we're not going to return to which had no negative consequences. No, not a single one No, more importantly not a single political ramification for example, nothing was sort of reconfigured forever No institutions had their sort of I'd say public legitimacy permanently damaged beyond repair

By the sort of the the effects of the 2008 recession where the state looked at you And looked at sort of the fact that it was no longer able to like Performance democratic mandate of well, why do we want? Why do we why would we buy into this? You know what everything that's happening, right? If it's not really going to make us what better off and just said fuck you You get nothing. What you get is Hopefully a slightly less high inflation rate So, you know, it won't be as catastrophically expensive to buy all of your stuff However, it will still be

Catastrophically expensive. Yeah, it's gonna look it's gonna be stuff you can't afford but not buy as much Well, the thing is the important thing is If you can't afford to buy a loaf of bread, right? That's better than being able to afford it by having to bring the money for it in a wheelbarrow because that would be ridiculous That'd be too silly looking. Yeah, you'd be laughed at by all the other oaths Yeah, that's right. So yeah, the gong farmer would point at you While you're while you're carrying your wheelbarrow of cash like and your bow tie Oh, no, that's one of the most respected members of my community

So this and so this is this is from a Q&A with Andrew Bailey from the the MPC The question was are there any scenarios that are not catastrophic for the least well off and also pretty Devastating even for average earners to which he said the bank is very conscious that the poorest are hit hardest by inflation But if we if we don't bring it back to target, it's gonna get worse and we'll get worse precisely for those who are least well off However, he added that he has huge so it's basically it's like look if it's fucked either way basically is what he says So he says if he has huge sympathy and huge understanding for people who are struggling most with this and And it says I'm afraid and it says that it's big we're basically have to reduce consumption already

When people are already consuming kind of the bare minimum nothing Yeah, this is the sort of thing that in the trad kingdom the guy who had Andrew Bailey's job the guy who was like in charge of monetary policy Would be telling the king. Okay. Now is the point of which, you know, the peasants are gonna have to eat some grass over this Yeah But you can't say that so instead you have to say oh, well we're between the devil in the deep blue seat we're between inflation and Like cost of living I Guess like he is right that there is no like better option if you're gonna have an economy constituted the way that we have one

Yeah, it's true. It's just You might start asking dangerous questions like well, why do we have an economy constituted the way that we have one and I mean, I think if the the comparisons between this this present moment in 2008 I think are quite appropriate to make because if we're starting to talk about a recession that's Might not be as deep as in 2008, but will probably be as long Everyone is starting or the vast majority of people are starting from a much more about depths and lengths Much much worse position, right? The people who are least able to bear a recession are starting with less

So, you know, I think that the if you want to prestige of recession now they've done one And if you if you want to think about like how long did it really take for the political ramifications of the 2008 recession to become clear, you know too soon to tell Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Was that Zhu Enlai? Yes, or apocryphally I'm on a sort of lifelong quest to reference that quote as many podcast episodes as I can Absolutely, but the thing is it's we can say too soon to tell but we can also say like I sort of alluded to earlier

the idea that you know these these long-standing sort of liberal institutions that were sort of you know products of the Products of the sort of the mid 20th century or sort of inherited from earlier these these things They're supposed to keep everything running These things wet that where it's where it's so important that a public faith in them remains strong These these are the Institute faith in these institutions is going to erode much further Yeah, well my my serious answer is about eight years, right?

That that's that's your gap between the financial crisis in 2008 and the year when politics became normal 2016 the year that it's been every year since then So yeah, I I think maybe you know foolish to predict anything like this But you know, hey ask me in eight years time if I'm not like some charred bones And I and if the politics are even worse than now in a way that seems like a step change Then I'll be like, oh, that's because that episode of the podcast I recorded Incidentally, do you have or an exorcist he sees to be a thing? Yeah. Yeah

I will fully be looking like you know one of the sort of scavengers one of the raiders in the road But so if you get the chance to ask me that question before I like hack off some of your limbs for meat Then you know, it's because of this it's because of this right now Yeah, it's because of this happening now and the thing is I mean if you want to sort of pull back a little bit further, right? I mean what's happening? what the one of the reasons that that 2008 happened was quite was was that there's this overextension of Credit and power to a deregulated banking industry that we assumed would just sort of solve a lot of issues and then you know

That some music stopped and then everything fell apart a lot of that being because because we wanted them to lend like crazy and now We also want them to lend like crazy because we've you know, we're raising interest rates So and our leaders bravely ask what if the music never stopped? Yeah But and I mean in this case right instead of instead of a global crisis I mean there is a sort of a global crisis that's happening It's just very acute in Britain because our political institutions are essentially just set up like a gigantic Target for this sort of thing. Yes

Yeah, we're if you remember right if you can think that if instead of instead of banks in the previous crisis It's sort of you know energy companies in this crisis If you think about the fact that it's that we Deregulated the energy sector to the point where a couple of guys just had a go at starting an energy company Forgot to hedge any of their prices and so then went out of business at the cost of I think 60 pounds a person per year Yeah It is That's the thing right and I think this speaks to so you're talking about it didn't have to be this way

We weren't sort of like forced into this this position of being like unusually vulnerable to this crisis By you know geography or destiny or anything like that like we chose to Well our politicians our politicians chose to Remove all of our gas storage, but like in general like We have a lot of renewable energy We could have had a lot of nuclear energy if we'd wanted to We're not very dependent like the French We're not very dependent on Russian energy even when the climate gets extreme

It still doesn't get extreme by european standards yet There's all sorts of ways in which we could have made this so much easier on ourselves and we Sort of deliberately perversely chose not to It's not even British way the uniquely British position on the world Which isn't enabled us to be a world leader for so many years We don't take the easy route Alice Yeah, that's right positioning my dick and balls directly over the big mechanized boxing gloves that i'm cranking up on a big spring Government by nasty the horse surely surely this won't happen at 45th time

And I mean you know this is the thing I think that that I wanted to sort I want to draw attention to a couple of things Which is just if you look at the chart of rates since 2008 I mean where it's sort of at six around 2008 and then just Basically has to be below one forever or this happens You know it is risen by not that fucking much in order to cause a gigantic fucking catastrophe It's still under 2% right? Yes, I mean the question is will it stay there do we expect it to stay there all that stuff But the fact that this that there was so and this is what I think comes back to like

It's it might not be technically as damaging as the previous recession, but distributionally the people who kind of matter most have the least Or at least matter most, you know morally in a sense like politically if you care about democracy and so on and so on And so just the fact that we were I mean the the story of the sort of you Anglo-American economies since You know 1980 1997 whenever you want to start counting is basically just finding out how close to the bone You can run everything. You know if yes, how how little give Can we have while just keeping this going for one more fucking spin? of the of the uh a roulette wheel essentially and we just we just kept going we pulled out all the kerplunk guys And there was with the ball was balancing on one

Kerplunk stick which was interest rates being nothing. Kerplunk stick was Vladimir Putin Oh, shit. I think the kerplunk the name of the kerplunk stick was zero percent interest rates forever Because if no one has anything and nothing is expected to work They can't really have much much in the way of an interest rate and we had one we had we had we had nothing Which basically meant like the economy could sort of imagine an economy into being kind of like a dreamer Right and the product of that was we get allowed various like scoot like various goofs Australian money farmers Infiltrating the halls of power all of this stuff

Yeah, and speaking of Vladimir Putin. Did we did we see your urie gala? issuing a threat to Vladimir Putin. Yes, lord. What's he gonna do? What of his is he going to bend? Well, this is the thing so urie gala was saying like, you know Vladimir Putin if you if you fire nuclear weapons at the united kingdom It will not work because he's gonna die It conjure a force field into being that will cause them to go wrong And he was inviting the people of britain to join him in this endeavor But so then I was obviously like Vladimir Putin with growing horror pouring himself a bowl of cereal and discovering every spoon in his drawers bends

Look, here's the thing it says this is all politics. This is all I'm I'm tired of politics boo politics Uh, I want to talk about soul machines. Okay, you're grinning at me Uh I I I don't like that. It makes me uncomfortable. Why are you grinning at me because soul machines is asking You three and you at home to say hello to digital people I say hello to digital people all the time and these get mad at me That's right. Yeah Um, and that you can create your digital workforce the workforce of the future

It's digital people. Is it the sims? What if all your employees were sims more or more or less? What if they just went more and then there was a picture of a football above the head? You can sit I'll keep that in mind So build the future. So I've gotten I've got soul machines in in front of me. This this is the startup It's called soul machines. Say hello to digital people Uh, I'd like everyone to please navigate to uh soul machines.com including you at home And just open our textbooks. Yeah, just look at some of the um New humans the humans of tomorrow that are being created great

Riley not great, uh, sort of like last gen console tech demo Yeah, there's a little there's something of the project milo about it Yeah, I was gonna say and I was saying like often before we were recording that it reminds me a lot of like Final the first final fantasy movie where the film was really bad but like they marketed as like this is advanced animation and all the characters like look like real humans and It was just like very unsettling to watch and when I look at these it's like, yeah in all cases There's like I'm looking through like the use cases I see one. Yeah, there is one where they talk about um, so there's a section called life like thinking and this comes in the use

case for financial services and Like there is a gif of um one of the soul machine women who Kind of like there is one section where she just gives off this very evil smirk and I'm just kind of like You know, this is the smirk that someone would give me as they tell me about like I can't afford to pay my mortgage and I'm going to be homeless Yeah, and also the doors are already sealed. I so I I see another use case here, which is um uh You can get customer insights and a powerful new way with your new digital customer experience officer

And what this is is it presents you the data that you gather from your customers? um, and then this uh, this digital woman tells you it in the form of a like a sort of a fake In the form of like a fake, um Like video call and what what they've done here is they've invented the sort of like traditional SimCity advisors again um You just have a little fake person to talk to who says you can't cut funding you'll regret this or whatever So you'll regret this you will ruin

Essentially what this what we have is we have a a company that creates what it considers to be you know Life-like animations of people with what it calls me will I am It with well, that's not the only celebrity. I did I'll get to that one more like will I'm not Is is that it is it is an animation of a person from the shoulders up and uh, they are They have this sort of deep ai that is supposed to be a digital brain Where they can react and talk empathetically to anyone talking to them So if you smile at them, they'll kind of mirror your expression Um, so you're sort of tries to trick you into thinking you're talking to a real person

And they and they can also according and according to the ad copy not just do that, but they can like perform tasks So I know in an interview about the digital workforce This is what the co-founder said at some point in the future You might be able to create a digital version of yourself or multiple versions of yourself And they can go out and do stuff make money for you make money for your company. Well, you're doing something else That's a whole lot more fun So that's the idea is that you you can take your you can make a digital twin that looks exactly like you Go send them to work at the spreadsheet factory

But then they're only working also with other digital twins and for your boss's digital twin I It's a good thing that this does not work right because if this if this worked like the the way that they market it That would raise some serious ethical quandaries. Luckily, it doesn't raise any serious ethical quandaries because this is Bullshit Well, that's and that's the thing when I when I found this but I found this company I was like, wow, this is very I know I'm gonna save that for a sec because the website is like basically like

Hey, check this out. These these are real people and also they're like your slaves And you know, you can you can accrue more of them to serve you And it's like no, that's not what it is. What it is is you've put a sort of a tech demo face on at best a chatbot, right? But The the vibe from the marketing of this is very much like you can you can sort of like exercise dominion over these very real These souls these people It's basically it's Detroit become human. Shit is what it is. I was gonna say what it really is is it's it's it's it's an opportunity For a middle manager to have the or at least it's pitched as the opportunity. There's a cop one There's a cop one if you got a use cases public sector. There's a cop

No Well, it's an opportunity for middle managers to have the experience of being like a great viking warrior and having thralls follow human development They um They they got new zealand police to sign up to this for their non-emergency number. You can talk to Who is quite literally a robo cop? Yes Um, so it says uh, they say what is it? So see digital people see through the camera allowing their digital brain to react to facial expressions and mannerisms and

Resport respond accordingly in real time and digital brain They hear through the microphone and their digital brain It's trying so hard to make you think that this is a person and like empathize with them on the one hand being like Oh, they basically have a soul. Uh, you know, if you hurt their feelings, they will start crying Uh, but on the other hand, we actually make it extremely easy to abuse them Abuse of our digital staff will not be tolerated No, it'll be encouraged. This is this is like sort of like the vibe of this is sadism really I think somehow it'd be I think somehow it'd be worse if you like did abuse one of the soul like machine

uh avatars and because The whole kind of selling point as far as I can see with them is that like they are there Unlike your kind of like planned avatars that you know, um, sort of either have like a monotone expression Or they kind of just smile all the time These ones are supposed to sort of show you a range of emotions which means that in theory You could hurt the emotions of a soul machine by telling them that it really sucks that they're going to be made homeless And being and being told about it by an avatar And that will stop you from doing it because you'll have to think about the soul machine's mental health

Well, some of the use cases of this go to not just financial services not just, you know, refusing your mortgage Or kicking you out of your house, but to as we've seen cops to health care to education There's there's a lot of sort of use cases here where you're going to be interacting with people who are highly stressed and often The job here, which you know, I sort of feel quite ambivalent about taking away from a human is You know telling people things that you they do not want to hear telling them that you cannot help them And so, you know, maybe on the one hand, this is sort of a digital punch bag for people to you know This thing tells you that you know tells you what your hospital bill is going to be and you know

You cry and it perceives that the person doesn't have to which is yeah Actually More fucked and like isolating in the long run Well, it perceives that it appears to empathize with you. Yes, according to the according to the copy. This is what they say Because we have like engineered out the like a Necessity of empathizing with anyone because that was you know making People who did have to do these jobs very sad. Yeah, this does this does basically feel like a way of being like, well, we're not gonna like We understand that you want to speak to humans and we understand that you want to have interactions with people that like you can relate to

But instead of doing that, we're gonna we're gonna take different iterations of milo from xbox and And and give them emotions so that when you shout at them as they keep repeating your parcel number You can see that they're getting sad and that will make you feel really good Which would you like to feel more lonely? Because you can now only ever speak to a fake person What what we have done is we have like like in silence of the lambs We have draped clippy in a human skin suit

That's gonna there's gonna come a point at which you're sort of You know pouring your heart out to one of these things and you're like, can I speak to a real person? And it's gonna call you racist for calling a person So I have a more list of what I can do I have a bigger list of what I can do Touch they can feel the intent of the user through a touch screen and are able to interact with virtual objects So you can sort of touch them and they'll react to a touch screen. I like that even less in the context now You can sexually assault an ai

Think in a conversation digital people can imagine potential outcomes way criteria and make decisions about what to say next This is where it very much gets to being like we they definitely have a soul Yeah Learn they can learn through interaction with the world and understand human emotions through facial expression tone of voice and show empathy That's the important one. Of course, dude. I look at the actual can't do that. Shit. Come on When you look at the um, when you look at the industries that it's in as you all pointed out like like uh, either like healthcare Financial services education a robot sector. Yeah being robocop. Yeah, like there are a lot of people

It's basically it's just there to empathize with the fact that nothing can be done for you. We gave robocop anxiety Why did we do that? In addition to speak with imposter syndrome In addition to speech digital people understand how to communicate with their faces They can express attentiveness openness thoughtfulness and optimism Intuitive behaviors and enhanced expressions allow digital people to autonomously add emotionally appropriate eye contact And have more depth in their emotions sexy contact

Yeah, so for here's an example where it says yeah, florins for example had a decent facial mimicking feature This is a journalist writing about it when I smiled at her she smiled back And it was a lovely jennyman looking smile that actually endeared me to her And that's how you know she wasn't a real woman. Yeah I mean like this is the thing this is so like the the the weak link of that interaction is You the human we we fucking pair bond with anything We love to do it. You stick a pair of googly eyes on a kettle and we will get sad because what if the kettle feels sad What if the kettle's too hot?

Yeah, it doesn't require any kind of like technological Innovation to make us empathize with something we do for free. It also feels kind of counter-intuitive because like um And this is only obviously it's only based on anecdotes, but I feel like most people kind of care a lot about they They're very good at like anthropomorphizing things and they care a lot about like the stuff we do But they hate they fucking hate humans like I don't understand like this We are the premise or even like the concept that like oh when people interact with like things that look like them In digital space that like the

And as long as they kind and and the more they look like, you know, the person they're talking to The more kind of human and interaction will be like there is no Example of like where that has ever come into whether where like that has ever been proven and if anything like people love abusing other people that they have no Like human obligation to like if any like if the kind of like if dating apps and like or any real type of app Is kind of like service customer service in particular, right? Like if those have proven anything's like no actually people really love fucking like venting and Like trying to abuse other people but often out as an expression of powerlessness

But if you remember this isn't all this isn't just for that, right? It's also for stuff like being your digital customer experience officer. It's supposed to be it's supposed to try and Take a lot of these these communicative jobs and trying to say what if we just automated them Like automated the mcdonald's battalion customer experience officer Here's the thing right give me give me the fucking robot if it can solve my problem But usually they can't however we've also reached a point where like Usually the people can't solve the problem either because they've turned them into robots

Because like when you deal with most of these customer services department, everyone is reading off a script And so if you're trying to resolve a problem that doesn't follow the script people are like, um, I'm afraid that's not what I have written on the card Okay, can I speak to a human hire up the food chain who isn't operating from a pre-written set of scripts Can I can I speak to a human who's allowed to like exercise autonomous thoughts? Yeah, well, I think that the um, one of the one of the other things there is this This is definitely attempting to be about much more than customer service. It's trying to replace It's trying to take what automation and outsourcing did for much of the uh labor force and do it for the um, right

You might for the much of the sort of physical labor force and do it for the white collar Uh, sort of fake job spreadsheet guy Um marketing, uh analyst. Yeah Oh, no, they're coming from management consultants. Yeah, well, it's very timely and in our current age of, uh, It feels like half the people have just disappeared Uh due to You know a combination of a bunch of people dying of covet and a bunch of people becoming Disabled because of covet and also a bunch of people being forced out of the economy and outside of the wire outside of fiddler's green

And outside of our site and you know more and more atomization Um, so it's great because now we don't have to worry about this because you can you can get it from a sim instead And it doesn't work. It's a sim that we're going to save the verdict for the end Uh, it's a sim that has what's called a digital brain with cognitive modeling where it's all of this stuff Is supposed to heavily imply that this is basically a person as far as your concern Was going to be able brain is it doesn't have a digital brain Um, and wouldn't okay, so let's let's That this is the killer paragraph of what i've read right says well soul machines has a clear

This is from tech crunch has a clear outline of the ways it can enhance the future of for example customer experience It still has a ways to go to get the tech where it needs to be The digital people, uh that are now in the market are essentially visual chatpots. There we go. Yeah, there it is We've great clip the humans skin. You know great fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, they seem to only be able to answer scripted questions Uh in a freight phrasing a specific way and have a few responses that they just cycle through So it's not just that it's an oblivion mpc. It would it would be like Fine what wouldn't be fine? I would still have all of my other objections But if they had marketed it on that basis like uh, we made very nice looking chatpots that all like allow you to

You know have have a sort of pleasant visual experience while you get all of this shit Fine, whatever. Why is all of the marketing for this like, um, it's it has a it feels Joy and it is beauty Uh, why I can tell you exactly why the marketing marketing is led like this It's from the next paragraph in the article. I was reading The funding it was led by new investor soft bank. There we go. That's gonna be why asks and answers Thank you. Yeah, it's been a while since we've seen a soft bank company like Really step up to the plate with just some absolute fucking madness and I

The thing is right I could duplicate or improve upon every result that they claim to be achieving with this By sticking a pair of googly eyes on a self checkout machine You put a little name label on the self checkout machine that says, you know, hi, i'm robert or whatever Exactly the same if not better response. Mr. Robert checkout machine. Yeah, exactly And and yet I am not being given series a funding by soft bank, you know, which to me is an injustice The checkout machines when they get too human are a bit of nerving So I don't know if you've experienced the ones they have in the sainsbury's

Because what happens is throughout the checkout process the sainsbury's checkout machine will talk to you in kind of like robot voice Like please scan an item and then suddenly right at the very end of the process when you're done It changes voice into like cockney arm brass and goes. Do you want to receive? It fucks me up every time Oh, do you want to receive? So we we have that's I mean that's part of the answer right is that a soft bank has come up with this thing um another thing that is it's saying is that like And you can sort of see them slowly deemphasizing this from a lot of their copy, but for a while

They were like this is the workforce of the metaverse a fake place with no one in it that we're populating with fake people Who are going to be doing all of the bullshit jobs for you? But you don't have to pay them it is it's kind of a strange like Backward solution to a lot of the um A lot of these sort of you know standard problems of capitalism, right where it's like well What if all of the workers we've sort of recognized that most of the a lot of the workers are sort of you know surplus like like Managerial overproduction at this point. So we're just gonna we're just gonna like let them

Create a digital version of themselves That's kind of like where one just sort of takes papers and puts them in the intray And then one puts them back in the out tray and they just pass them back and forth 24 hours a day forever Um, but the problem it sort of misses the point that the point of a lot of that work is just to keep those people busy Um And and so the idea just that like the idea that this was going to be I primarily metaverse first thing instead of like a sort of you know mostly now a chatbot thing that mostly exists in the normal world Um, it's just it's so I think I think it's quite perfect for just encompassing the

Strange abstraction that that whole sort of three months. I think where that was like the future Was was meant to be We're just going to populate this like second life. We're going to populate the whole thing with bots and then like four perverts Um, but they did have one one press release that I wanted to talk about This is released on june 7th of last month of two months ago, rather June 7th of two months ago, perfect Soul Machines the groundbreaking company pioneering the creation of autonomously animated digital people in the metaverse and digital worlds of today Announced the launch of a new entertainment division with the goal of creating unique and highly personalized experiences

redefining fan engagement at entertainment enterprise Um, and this is so what this is after they got their funding from soft bank. They did this The new the new division will launch its inaugural digital person an avatar of legendary american golfer jack neclaus You heard the likes of the power drive Yeah, yeah, come on you guys you guys miss lee carvalho Yeah, so much. Yeah With this launch soul machines continues its quest to redefine the future of digital entertainment with hyper realistic digital twins of Real-life celebrities entertainers and public figures

That's why will I am okay. I demand Michael Barrymore Digital jack neclaus depicts jack at the age of 38 the height of his playing career Let me tell you something about digital jack neclaus. I don't know what jack neclaus sounds like Yes, so i'm doing jack. Nicholson instead Digital jack has the ability to provide a range of user experiences by answering Digital jack has the ability to provide a range of user experiences by yeah, sorry jacks. Don't come. Oh, it's weird It's it's they've called him jackmate. Anyway jackmate has the ability to provide A range of user experiences by answering questions from fans providing insight based on more than 60 years of memories

So essentially what they did is they asked him a few questions and then like put those into a chat bot And so if you ever and so mostly what happens if you ask like an off-kilter question to a chat bot They'll just deflect So you can just like I don't know pay what like 10 dollars for a virtual meet and greet with like a 38 year old version of an Almost dead professional golfer. Yeah, and you can hear all the classic jack neclaus phrases like the golf You can't handle the golf It's it's so cool that you can't even die anymore Like if you're famous, uh, like if you've ever been recorded on anything for for film

Or you know, yeah your personality your likeness can just be redeployed to do whatever I like that. I think that's cool Jack neclaus has been sent to the donbas Again, like if this actually Was more than just what it appears to be which is a chat bot with the final fantasy spirits within animation Then yeah, you would be confined to a sort of unlife However, what it seems to be mostly offering is a kind of Hall of presidentization, but for uh, everyone who's who's been able to give them like not to not to get to zizek here But I I find the hall of presidents is itself a kind of unlife

Uh, I I find I find it creepier than something that was sentient Um That's sort of like a that that you know now he belongs to the ages kind of immortality. I really don't like it Yeah, well, I mean it's um I think that there's this there is this this sense, um You know, I mean like a number one. They're also resurrecting people, right? They're gonna bring back maryland munro Uh, so you're gonna be able to get to like leave her alone I'm not I don't even like her that much but like the at some point the obsession with maryland munro

That we just kind of like kicked back into gear in the last couple of years is it's downright perverse Well, I mean don't don't forget really what they're gonna do. Of course is they're going to Make you're gonna basically like go into like an like an rpg character creator Yes, make a maryland munro looking face that is essentially very scary for to look on for more than a few seconds And then if you're gonna be like, hey, what's your favorite thing to sing? And it will be like happy birthday, mr. President and then, you know, you've paid your 10 dollars to, you know Do your meet and greet with virtual maryland munro. It's macabre. I insist that this is macabre also I would we can't even do macabre. Well, it's sort of too

It's it's sort of too, um ham-handed and sort of shitty It's it's it's kind of like It's it's it's like a kind of budget haunted house that's asking to be taken very seriously But like you can see the that the wolf man's wearing a digital wristwatch and he's kind probably like high You know Anyway, that is uh soul machine smoke that shit now i'm the digital wolf man Oh, I have one more one one more uh paragraph if a user asks the question, it's not easy to answer This is uh viola one of the people that a journalist talked to

Uh viola will provide a standard deflection or she'll respond in ways that are surprising if certainly not intended For example, I asked viola. Why do you look sad? And she responded by pulling up a youtube video of all stand by you by the pretenders I sure love these viola delights. I hope they don't have viola ends It's so that's sort of what where we are right you go meet jack nicklaus and then he'll sort of He'll sort of open his mouth two or three times to say something and then you know Pull up a video of uh pull up a video of lee carvallo's putting challenge. Yeah, yeah Ah, the future. I'm quite impressed with the pretenders to be honest. Violet has quite good taste

I was expecting a more pedestrian. See the pear bonding. It happens so easily shit. Fuck. Yeah already you think already you think that the uh, the the the cockney brass from the uh, uh, uh Self checkout machine is sort of endearing you'd like to see the self checkout machine on a soap opera I've got such a soft spot for cockney brasses. They just remind me of my aunts Well, um with all that being said, uh, I want to say I think that does it about does it for us for today Uh, but we will see you on the bonus episode and more over Uh, thank you to my lovely co-host for being here. Thank you to you for listening and uh, Then also, I'm sorry. We no longer have any tickets to the edinburgh show. The edinburgh show has you can't come to it

sold out you can't come No, you can't nothing you have to you you have now Everyone is it's now no fap. Uh, no coming to the edinburgh show No coming in the edinburgh show listening to the recording of the edinburgh show and coming Yeah, none of that And australia dates, uh, we are adding a second night in brisbane brisbane brisbane We are that is right. We have filled the room in brisbane. Uh, but we have another one Another one

Two rooms in a large city. That's right against all odds We found two rooms from brisbane. That's right. Uh, we've uh, we have that We also have tickets on sale soon for sydney and canberra And if we haven't sold out the second night in melbourne, then we still have that second night in melbourne Yeah, and also there's milo milo's got a show in edinburgh Yeah, if you're if you're coming to edinburgh if you're in and if you're nearby edinburgh, um, you can see me every day at the mash house 435 the show is called voicemail. Um, it's uh, I had a bunch of comedians in today, which was very nice and um A couple of them have texted me to tell me that they hate me because the show is very good

So that's you know, that's the greatest compliment you can receive. Oh, absolutely. Your your haters give you energy Yeah, uh, so all that being said, we'll see you on the bonus. Bye rune. Bye You