AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.

13:41Ed Ongweso Jr.:It's still defined by the limits of the models where they don't really want to take a stance. So they're exhaustively documenting both sides of any discussion or debate. That's not really what you want in writing.

13:52Chloe Radcliffe:And it's also just boring takes that we've heard before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of by nature.

13:55Ed Ongweso Jr.:And on top of that, the way they lead into every point has the same, this is one thing I've noticed, that has the same dramatic weight no matter what the point is. And it's always way too much. It's always like, then the most important thing happened and it will be a report I cited in a single sentence in 7 ,000 words. It's like, oh, the BIS report from this. It's just like, okay, well, you took 300 words to lead to a single thing and then didn't build on it at all because you didn't read it. Because you definitely didn't read the thing because you definitely didn't write this.

14:24Chloe Radcliffe:And because the AI model doesn't have its own personal judgment calls about what is and isn't the most important. And then if the person is completely outsourcing their decision making, then they are also not making those judgment calls.

14:36Ed Ongweso Jr.:You know, yeah, your moral values don't come into it. And that's an important part of writing, especially if you're doing something where you're trying to argue what people should believe in, right? If I can't sense any sort of urgency and you're hedging constantly and you're using an AI to hedge, what's the point of that? What I think it is, is that, so I understandably, these people don't want to talk to me very much. Right. Probably due to the things - They want to talk to their AI. Yeah, they want to talk to their AI. But the few that will engage with me, they'll say, well, I take an idea to it and I go back and forth.

15:06Ed Ongweso Jr.:Then I edit what it says. I'm just like, then you're just copy pasting their words. And like, well, what's the difference between that and a human editor? Wow. The answer is, when I speak to Matt Hughes, he's a human being with the same demented mind as me. And we workshop ideas. so sorry man no man flat fuck mac hughes is a fucking legend he's the better offline legend of reality and he is he and i will workshop things and sometimes be like i don't know about that man i don't know that makes sense and that's the most valuable thing in the world that is more being told bad idea or i don't really get it is the best feedback in the world yeah the best thing in the world is just someone being like i don't know you derisively talk about yourself sometimes Chloe and say like oh well i'm not an expert actually being able to explain something to someone who is a layman is actually way more useful than to an expert.

15:53Chloe Radcliffe:Because otherwise - Thank you. I am a hero. You are. Thank you. But it really is it. Also, I think a relationship where somebody is able and willing to critique someone else's work is actually one of the most respectful relationships because it is entrusting the creator, the writer, the thinker, whatever. It is inherently trusting that that person can handle the criticism and can better their work and it is to me it's it feels so much better when somebody looks at me and is like hell yeah what you did is like it's really not good enough yeah because i'm like thank fucking god i i'll fix it i want to get i want to make it better and then the converse of

16:33Ed Ongweso Jr.:that is when you impress them you've actually impressed them when they're like damn this bangs

16:38Chloe Radcliffe:it's honest

16:47Ed Ongweso Jr.:Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

17:24Ed Ongweso Jr.:This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary. Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth. I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary. as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.

18:01Ed Ongweso Jr.:But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals. Adio is designed for that moment.

18:35Ed Ongweso Jr.:It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster with revenue agents and automations working around the clock. You'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart.

18:53Chloe Radcliffe:Ugh, the washer won't start and the laundry's already piled to the ceiling.

18:57Ed Ongweso Jr.:Hopping on grandappliance.com.

18:59Chloe Radcliffe:Great idea. I heard they have next day delivery.

19:02Ed Ongweso Jr.:Uh-huh, I'm seeing that too. And they have a bunch of GE options in stock. Oh, that's great. We've always had good luck with GE appliances. This one looks perfect. Scheduling for tomorrow. Gosh, Grand really makes it easy. Another crisis averted by the team at Grand Appliance. Visit GrandAppliance.com today. Grand Appliance. Appliance experts since 1930. And the other thing that these AI people, you ever see them mention taste online? These AI freaks are like, oh, we've got to bring taste into it. And the way they use taste is like how, like the Ferengi from Star Trek, the next generation, talk about, I don't know, everything.

19:41Ed Ongweso Jr.:thing or just like guys online. I retro inform you. I do not understand that. Don't worry. Don't worry.

19:46Chloe Radcliffe:The one girl, the girl who works in Hollywood is like, no, it's fine.

19:50Ed Ongweso Jr.:It's a really simple comparison. It's guys online who refer to women as females. It's this thing. Females. Yeah. Yeah. We need taste in our models. And what they mean is discernment, but they're not smart enough to actually realize that. And you can't train discernment. Discernment is contextual and cultural and all these other things. and when you say this to ai people they're like you're just being superior you're just being

20:13Chloe Radcliffe:superior to people you don't really understand it's like they're being superior yeah also show

20:18Ed Ongweso Jr.:me some stuff that you've written that actually is good so this okay so this actually will go back

20:22Chloe Radcliffe:to your your very initial question to me was about i i sort of answered about stand-up and not hollywood more broadly um but hollywood from a creative standpoint so it's hollowing out post

20:32Ed Ongweso Jr.:production stuff but and just actually before i forget is that stuff it's hollering out chat gpt and stuff like that or is that another kind of ai i don't know because that's that's kind of thing um and that's the thing like because all the ai gets conflated anyway i talked over your question

20:49Chloe Radcliffe:i apologize no no no you're good um the when i think about like the actual creative output within hollywood because that's what people right people are like we're gonna make a whole movie with ai We're going to make a whole, whatever. You're going to be able to make, I mean, this is the famous video of, what was it, Tom Cruise and -

21:06Ed Ongweso Jr.:Oh, the Brad Pitt, which actually ended up being green screen and like a bunch of like non-AI stuff.

21:11Chloe Radcliffe:Yeah.

21:11Ed Ongweso Jr.:Hell yeah.

21:12Chloe Radcliffe:But the idea that we will make things that people can watch that are fully, purely AI or that are some vast, vast, vast majority AI is fundamentally going to suck. It is what, right? That's what you're saying. It's going back to what you're saying. And I agree that like, And that will happen. I do think that that will happen. I think it will happen from outside of the current studios and creative guild model. I think that somebody in some warehouse will create an AI model that will be putting out. They maybe already are.

21:46Ed Ongweso Jr.:They just put out one and it looks like a dog shit. Oh, is it that old generative AI film that just came out? I'm going to look this up while we're talking.

21:52Chloe Radcliffe:But it will get good, right? Like there will be people who are able to, you know, fill your entire, your entire short form feed can be filled with stuff that looks kind of AI verticals that look kind of like Hollywood. Right. And it is going to be crap. It whatever, to whatever degree it already exists, it is. and what is lacking there is, it's exactly what you were saying. It is the discernment for people to say, to stand up and say, this is not interesting enough for me to count as my entertainment. And I think that people have less of that pushback now. I think they have less willingness to push back like that now.

22:33Chloe Radcliffe:And I think that people have less of that willingness to push back against, to employ discernment now than ever. And I actually lay the blame of that at the feet of the endless scroll feed, not at the feet of AI. Like, I think that AI sort of came in and was this incredibly powerful tool. But because our standards for entertainment have already kind of been nuked by the endless scroll feed, now this incredibly powerful tool can come in and produce stuff that's shit and we're not going to push back.

23:07Ed Ongweso Jr.:Well, my controversial perspective on that is I think streaming media is a bad idea. I think streaming media, I think Netflix, streaming media is a terrible idea because it's both what you're saying, Chloe, and just the overall sense that there is unlimited content. So the sense that you could just build as much of it as possible and it'll be fine. I will say I don't think it's going to take over just because it's too expensive. It's also it's so hard to actually make a cogent video of longer than a few minutes. And do you not think that it will get good enough in a year? The problem is, is that there's a bunch of psychological things with movies that they'll have trouble really.

23:43Chloe Radcliffe:Totally, totally.

23:43Ed Ongweso Jr.:There is, I think over in Asia, I forget where, they've got a lot of these ones which are coming out, which are just like tight, like short melodramas that are watched for you. I mean, yes. I've been seeing these on my feed where it feels like they catch on not because they're good, but because it's absurd. Like there's this one with this black girl was a mermaid and her classmates found out and they're racist. They're just saying slurs. And I looked in the comments to see, okay, and, you know, I get a sense of, is this viral? Is this getting, are people liking it? And it's mainly just like sort of engagement bait.

24:19Ed Ongweso Jr.:I've also seen a fair amount of evidence that those things are, like they're paying to push them into the algorithm. Because there was a big thing, New York Times, I think, last year about like a really successful AI house. There's making AI films and the views just randomly crashed. Yeah. And I mean, there's this company called Higgsfield AI that's doing really dodgy influencer stuff. They just bought, for those of you listening, the 12 of you will know, I mean, there's this thing called Marcus the Worm, which is a guy in a VR environment going, Robert. Anyway, one of the Marcus accounts sold to Higgsfield AI and it's just AI dog shit.

24:57Ed Ongweso Jr.:Oh, that guy's an AI guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they just sold it to an AI slop account. And it's really hard to pass the success of them. and like how actually people because to your point eddie it's like people are laughing at them because they're like some of them are so bad i i think that there is going to be

25:14Chloe Radcliffe:a sort of i think that there's going to be a split between people who uh put a premium on something that they know was made by people and people who are completely willing to accept just

25:26Ed Ongweso Jr.:moving picture on my screen yeah yeah and i think the what we're already kind of seeing it more with the Substack stuff, but people are violently rejecting this. And I think what the AI people hope happens is that people are just so beaten down. I get the opposite feeling. People are getting more and more angry. People are getting more aggressive about it. People are... I mean, there's this whole thing of the... Did you see the OpenAI Influencer Day? OpenAI paid for a bunch of influencers to go to an OpenAI thing in upstate New York and I don't know, walk around being like... Sheen tried to do this where they brought them all to the factory and they're like...

26:00Ed Ongweso Jr.:Yeah, when Shein flew them out and they're like, this isn't a sweatshop. We have air conditioning. It's like, oh yeah, they can't kill themselves. We have nets to catch them. No, but this, it was just like - Well, don't use any water at this data center. Come and check it out. But I looked into it and it was mostly influencers who only already did Claude stuff or like OpenAI stuff. But the occasional ones that didn't, they had to post videos from like a person that said a slur in 2021. one. They were like, I'm very sorry for using chat GPT, I swear to God. Did you see the Hank Green thing? Oh, yeah, I did.

26:36Ed Ongweso Jr.:Oh, so there's this science communicator. Yeah, the little struggle session. There's some people who are going to email me about this, aren't going to be happy. He's a science communicator. Just to be clear, he's beloved. He's got a lot of things wrong about testosterone and autism. And also, he has fallen hook, line, and sinker, and been sponsored by Control AI, an effective altruist institute. Anyway, during one of his videos, he goes, he just apropos of nothing just goes well it means this and thank you for the pushback and he's like oh yeah i was using it for research and he still to this day is like yeah i was losing it using it for research i looked at the script i didn't say that in the script it's just like no one says i appreciate the pushback other than an ai model regular people don't say that in the flow of conversation but he is basically like i'm gonna shut down this i'm gonna stop producing for a while I've relied too much on AI.

27:25Ed Ongweso Jr.:And it's so bizarre because I don't think this is changing. I don't think it's going to become more permissible to use AI. AI is everywhere now, whether you like it or not, but that doesn't mean people are tolerant. People are getting aggressive. I don't think the AI industry realizes how angry people are. And to be clear, I'm not encouraging anger or violence or anything like that, but I don't have to. I think people are already angry. I saw a video from a few months ago of a data center getting canceled and a guy running outside and going like, it's canceled and everyone cheering. When OpenAI finally dies, it's going to be like Coruscant and the end of Return of the Jedi and the remake specifically.

28:04Chloe Radcliffe:I hope - another reference I don't get. I hope - You've never seen Return of the Jedi? Which one is that one? I hope - Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. Everybody, man, all of your nerd fans who are going to come to my show are like, we're canceling those tickets now. And I love nerds and I love you and I'm also a nerd. yeah yeah actually come up to me tell me the i will comp you a year's subscription to my premium newsletter if you buy a ticket i mean it oh well that's a that's a big offer uh one one time i when i didn't want to have a conversation with a friend i asked him to explain the plot of the matrix to me and then and we burned a couple hours and then we would get to like i would be like and what happened in the next one i was going through a breakup and i had to hang out with this friend and i did i like really didn't want to talk about my breakup and i was like what oh and what does

28:47Ed Ongweso Jr.:trinity do anyway it's like a libertarian mousetrap what's the architect and i kept being

28:54Chloe Radcliffe:like oh and what does that symbolize and he thought i was so interested what's zion oh wow oh they're like oh interesting and you're just inside your head just going

29:03Ed Ongweso Jr.:yeah but the thing is you could never have a conversation like that with an ai well actually you could get a boring expression of the matrix absolutely but he wouldn't be there he would yeah i could just walk well now i the voice mode you could you could probably get that going right you can have the conversation with it chloe they got they got this thing now where they got voice mode for these things and they're all buying little microphones like i barely even type anymore you know it smelled crazy in there also but they just sit in there being like computer computer no add the code now no delete that code oh i don't like it computer and these motherfuckers never share their code they never share the software they're building they're just working on ai for 15 hours a day so you know it's shit you know they don't need any of it So tell me, okay, wait.

29:43Chloe Radcliffe:Okay, I just had a friend who works, he works in tech and AI. And he was like, my goal is to build an AI agent for myself so that every single morning my AI agent can just tell me what emails are in my inbox. And I can tell my agent, you know, what to respond to who and that I never have to be in my inbox. I can just talk to my AI agent. Right. And when he says that, I'm like, honestly, that sounds amazing. I can't.

30:16Ed Ongweso Jr.:I'm sorry. Emails are not that hard.

30:19Chloe Radcliffe:I, yes, I agree. And like, we all deal with emails. But I'm like, it's hard. It's like that fantasy is very seductive, right? Right. The idea that I can just be like, and tell me what's in my inbox. Yeah. And tell her I can do the 24th, but we need to push it by a half an hour. And tell him that, right? Like, that is very, it's very, very tempting.

30:42Ed Ongweso Jr.:I see that. But my thing is like, I feel like if I don't read an email, I don't want to respond to it. Like, I don't want to just be like dashing stuff off. Because also, if you don't read a contract and you sign it, you're still bound by it. And that's how I feel with my emails. It's like, if my AI agent decides to call someone the wrong name or swear at them or send them an attachment that's just my last seven years tax returns, like, I don't know. I don't know what's happening. And maybe it will work.

31:08Chloe Radcliffe:And what if they would say that the AI is not going to make those mistakes?

31:10Ed Ongweso Jr.:I wouldn't believe them. But the other thing is like, how much time are you saving? How much time are you realistically? I'm sorry. Is your inbox so, person I've never met, is your inbox so huge? But this is the thing as well. It's the grand promise of AI. It's like, what are you getting back? What is this saving you? And everywhere I look, it's people are working more. They're not actually saving time. The problems I have in my life don't come from too many emails.

31:37Chloe Radcliffe:I also think as I'm thinking about this for myself, I'm like, I think I ingest information so much more clearly when I am sitting in front of the email, reading it, thinking about my response, typing out my response, rather than just sort of having a chat with a robot. I'm not really clinging to that information. And I'm not really having new ideas about, oh, fuck, I should actually talk to that other person about this. And I should ask them if they have an in here and they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

32:01Ed Ongweso Jr.:Yeah. Yeah. I think there's also this thing where it's like, you know, a lot of the desires and automation are how can we get assistant labor? How can we get some form of slave labor, servant labor? Like what shortcut can we do? And I feel like for a lot of the impulses around like making your home a bit more smart or making your digital life a little bit more streamlined, they are like, what if we could get the thing a human does? But like you're saying, you still need the human, right? The reason why the assistant works is because the assistant literally is a person goes through them and talks with you about them and not like you're playing a game of telephone with overviews and summaries.

32:54Ed Ongweso Jr.:The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary.

33:38Ed Ongweso Jr.:Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth. I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic. That's great.

34:12Ed Ongweso Jr.:Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals. Adio is designed for that moment. It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster with revenue agents and automations working around the clock.

34:49Ed Ongweso Jr.:You'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart.

34:57Chloe Radcliffe:Ugh, the washer won't start and the laundry's already piled to the ceiling.

35:02Ed Ongweso Jr.:Hopping on grandappliance.com.

35:04Chloe Radcliffe:Great idea. I heard they have next day delivery.

35:07Ed Ongweso Jr.:Uh-huh, I'm seeing that too. And they have a bunch of GE options in stock. Oh, that's great. We've always had good luck with GE appliances. This one looks perfect. Scheduling for tomorrow. Gosh, Grand really makes it easy. Another crisis averted by the team at Grand Appliance. Visit GrandAppliance.com today. Grand Appliance. Appliance experts since 1930.

35:32Ed Ongweso Jr.:These things dilute your life to a series of calendar appointments and emails. When it's not like, it's, I don't know, it's Wednesday. I've been on a bunch of calls all day. I don't want to do anything after 4.30pm. I might regularly go after 6pm. But today I don't want to do this. And honestly, the only AI thing that's actually impressed me, I'm going to tell you a story now. random i get reached out to by this company called matic that makes a robot that mops and vacuums your floor and it fucking rocks because all the data is on the device and i called it turdsly and it cleans my floors and it's great eighteen hundred fucking dollars what data is it what it's like it looks around your apartment and maps it out with radar but it's all kept on device i know shit in corner what's wrong with you what's wrong with you what's wrong why did you do this

36:13Chloe Radcliffe:You shit in the corner again. Is this puke? 55 % of the time, it's here.

36:20Ed Ongweso Jr.:And that's the thing. It's like, why do I like this? Because I don't have to mop my floor. And also, I didn't - But I got news for you. You don't have to mop your floor to start with.

36:28Chloe Radcliffe:Well, I mean, that's true.

36:30Ed Ongweso Jr.:Also, I didn't pay for it. I'm not going to mop my floor. You just go. But I think that that's the thing. This thing is$1 ,800. And it does very straightforward things very well. But that's the thing. $1 ,800 to clean your floors. And these people are like,$20, it'll do everything. No, it won't because your life is not a series of bits of data or watching your screen. It's the crazy bullshit that happens around it and your emotions, your endocrine system and how your life is going and how you feel that particular day and what you're capable of doing. And I don't know. I don't think that is data that can be captured, nor is it data that can be fucking trained on there.

37:04Ed Ongweso Jr.:And to your point, Eddie, as well, they really want a slave. They really suffer. They keep fucking talking about AGI. And they're like, yeah, we just want a conscious being that will trap. Yeah. And bend to our will. In a cellar and he'll run the market for us. He'll make everything richer. And he'll do the work for us. And we will get paid. And we will not do anything for him. But we will own him. Yeah. The AGI. And we will keep those who walk away from Omelas outside of his training. Yes. That doesn't know what we're doing. Which actually leads me neatly into Mark Zuckerberg's recent blog. Before we wrap up, I just want to read you one little quote from this piece of shit, motherfucker.

37:44Ed Ongweso Jr.:Now, this is a blog called The Future is for Everyone. The most trustworthy man in America. The most trustworthy and damp man out there other than Clammy Sam Elton himself. The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic. So, just to be clear, this is the guy who owns all of social media. Yeah. And his idea of the future is that everything should be shared other than the stuff he owns. And he is saying that he believes that delivering super intelligence to everyone is the way to answer the question of how people decide what matters in their own lives.

38:17Ed Ongweso Jr.:And you may wonder, what the fuck does that mean? And that's because he doesn't know either. He says, everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. This man has spent$150 billion or more on data centers and has yet to build that. Yeah. That's the thing. I ran it through Pangrom and it said it was 100 % human, which makes me think a team of interns and lawyers wrote it. My favorite was -

38:41Chloe Radcliffe:Something as insane as this robot will help you figure out what you want in your life might actually have been written by Mark Zuckerberg himself.

38:49Ed Ongweso Jr.:This is actually really good though. Everyone will have incredible tools for creation to express your ideas. My eight year old daughter can already code her ideas and produce videos in an evening that would have taken me months or been impossible previously. What the fuck are you talking about, Mark? Why are you letting your eight-year-old daughter in front of an LLM? Also, what are you doing that she could do it a few days that would take you months? Now we're designing a robot together. Are they? No, you're not. Meanwhile, researchers at Meta are generating novel crystal structures that are ideal for augmented reality glasses, and engineers are creating new apps in a fraction of the time it would have taken before.

39:25Ed Ongweso Jr.:So here's actually what's happening at Meta. Last year, an old man with dementia was talking to a Kylie Jenner branded bot, and he then got on a train to New York and then fell over and died. And that was the end of the story. Also, you could have sex chats with a John Cena bot, even if you said you were a child. This is meta. This is what meta builds. Now, the reason I brought this up is I have spent most of the day talking to people about the promise of AI. and whenever I try and bring up real things it does, everyone says it can summarize emails, it can do research. No one will talk like this because this is not real.

40:01Ed Ongweso Jr.:The promise of AI is a fucking lie. And also, all of these people live in compounds disconnected from the world. Why?

40:09Chloe Radcliffe:That's why his kid has to have sex chats with the John Cena bot. No, no, no. I don't think that's... You can go that. You can go that.

40:15Ed Ongweso Jr.:No, no, no, no, no. Chloe was misinformed on that one. That was not mom's, our close daughter.

40:26Ed Ongweso Jr.:and it's just this i think is like this i this is what i think is so vulgar about ai though which is the the people up the top who don't use this shit who don't touch it just like yeah it's going to do everything for everyone as happens for me with my army of servants i pay right now i'm just going to give that to everyone else how i don't fucking know that's someone else's job everything is someone else's job it's it's a hard problem and we need to figure it out together and but not me you're gonna figure out yeah and it just it feels like living in an alternative reality sometimes because they talk about this shit like building robots with their daughter or whatever also didn't he write some shit like this when he's pushing the metaverse you know he did the same thing we're gonna go live in a digital virtual reality where you can pay three million dollars for a square foot of virtual space and you'll realize your dreams do you ever go in the metaverse you ever try out i will never go there i will die in the metaverse i will die a million times you didn't go to the point i go there once robot no experiment keep that keep that away from me keep me away from

41:31Chloe Radcliffe:the walmart in the robots it's so crazy that actually the so the promise of ai let's like take that semi-seriously yeah it is insane to me that the goal at the end of the day is this thing that is inherently so human, which is answer the unanswerable question that you know exists within the blackness of your soul, right? Like that is, it is like, he is grappling with look inside yourself. Why do you feel unfulfilled when you wake up in the morning? And he is saying now we have invented a technology that will answer that and that there's no bridge to that gap there's no reason why this technology is going to fill the unfillable hole that we have not been that that people have been grappling with for hundreds of thousands of years maybe yeah forever he's like

42:28Ed Ongweso Jr.:he's like this tool will find my soul it's definitely in there i didn't find it in the metaverse but this is it's but that's actually a really good point it's these people are bereft of culture, the bereft of love and joy. Like they don't seem to enjoy anything. Well, you know, he's got the Julius Caesar cut again. He enjoys culture. The way they spend their money is not like -

42:48Chloe Radcliffe:Well, this is what's weird. So these people do not want to make product. They don't want to make art or jobs or products, really. They want to make money. Yeah. But they do benefit from art and products. And I think that is what is so off-putting about them. that it's like this guy is dealing with the same problems that we are dealing with. He's dealing with this. He's on the same search. He's on the same hunt for a purpose and fulfillment that any of us are. and it feels so smarmy to say i have a way i have figured out how to answer that that soul question better than any of you dumb fucks yes with my computer machine which it does the same thing as everyone else's right right it just it feel it's it's very very off-putting to watch somebody benefit from art and enjoy human connection and talk about wanting it and then hand a thing to us that is inherently non-human connection, that is inherently non-human, and that inherently just makes him money.

43:59Ed Ongweso Jr.:Yes. And ultimately is just an extraction tool that also is nothing like what he's describing with super intelligence for all and a smart assistant that knows everything. It doesn't exist. It's not what he's talking about. Kind of reminds me, just talking before the show about this, about Sam Altman was interviewed on recently. And he was like, well, what's it going to do? It's going to be able to answer wishes. And it's like, first of all, the moment they bring up magic, it's over.

44:25Chloe Radcliffe:And I asked you, was that a joke? Was he trying to be funny? And you said no.

44:30Ed Ongweso Jr.:No, it's also humorless man. Yeah. Just like, and he said, yeah. And then you won't believe the wishes of that. He sounds like, honestly, he occasionally slips into Trump. Like if it's just like, it's going to grant any wish you want. You won't believe it. Beautiful wishes. Because it's the same kind of like soullessness, just like over promising. But I was watching it earlier. It was like three questions. And the third one was like, you won't believe the kind of wishes it will answer. And it's just like, what the fuck are you doing? When you don't experience problems, I guess you just stop having ideas.

45:04Ed Ongweso Jr.:When you just stop having any friction in your life, you're like, what are fucking people deal with? Email? Do you think if Sam Altman's initial plan when he was pitching the Gulf Monarchs for$7 trillion, if that had been successful, do you think he'd be speaking about it in even more grand terms? Or just the same sort of like, it's a genie. It's a djinn. I think also I love the idea of just being like, yeah, it's a djinn. It's a djinn, which is famously always friendly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Famously, never a deal with consequences or costs of any kind. No famous stories about this at all, including Aladdin.

45:44Ed Ongweso Jr.:Yeah, definitely not in that region of the world. There are no stories about that. Yeah, Jesus Christ. But with him as well, I think he would have gone exactly the same path because if he'd have got$7 trillion, we'd be in the same fucking place. We'd be doing the same shit because large language models are inherently limited. Because, and this is not even a technical point there is only so much that you can get from training something you you are they it's what happens when you're disconnected from humanity and culture and love and joy and you see the world as ones and zeros and you say okay how do i learn well i just read a hundred books i read a hundred books and then i talk to the smartest person i know for seven hours i listen to lex friedman on four and i have peptides every minute and everything will be optimized when in fact our experiences inform us and we have no idea what experiences will inform us in what ways some of the best things and most interesting ideas i've had have been in the weirdest places or like middle of the night when i've not slept when i got to bed too late or i didn't eat enough so i woke up hungry i'm like wait and it's not because i'm hungry it's just because my brain goes hey you're like what have you looked at this part of the earnings and again

46:56Chloe Radcliffe:And this is the line between a human experience, which is inherently unpredictable, versus a machine experience, the goal of which is to make it as predictable as possible. And, I mean, I'm thinking about Hollywood. You were asking about Hollywood at the beginning. It's like Hollywood is a business of unpredictability. Yes. And the point of making art is to take a shot, and you don't know if it's going to work, and you don't know if it's going to flop. flop and we are trying tech people and finance people i think are trying to lay a a lens of predictability and your your language growth at all costs onto my business which is inherently a business of unpredictability and i think that that's art you know art and human experience is valuable when shit hits when you don't expect it to and also the other thing to yes and this

47:53Ed Ongweso Jr.:a lot of great art is not doesn't have an answer like i just watched last year's girlfriend uh watching twin peaks the return there's a large amount of that where you just have to kind of work it out and david lynch would never have told you no he would have he would have just said no like the fireman creating i can't actually continue that was spoiled spoiled twin peaks there but it's like some of the stuff that happens you just have to kind of experience you can't generate that because that's whatever the hell i think he had a like deeply spiritual process as well. One of my favorite interviews with Tim, he's like, you go to the movies and people want to talk about the movie when it's done.

48:27Ed Ongweso Jr.:And it's like the movie was the talking. Yeah. You have to just do that and then leave. And sometimes there aren't answers. And I think that that's the fundamental thing of all of this is like, oh, there must be an answer for everything. Everything must be normalized and packaged and financialized and commoditized. And the funny thing is, is I feel like this is the end run of capitalism as we know it. People think it's the AI ball. No, I think we're at the end run of this stage of capitalism and whatever follows will be chaos because the markets are no longer based on reality. They're completely divorced from any material value.

49:02Ed Ongweso Jr.:And even the discussion of AI, it's like, yeah, it's so powerful. Is it? Or does it just use a lot of power? Everyone interprets everything based on these fucking shadows on the wall of the cave and the very fundament of meaning is being stripped out partly because these companies think they can normalize creation of stuff of everything that everything can be generative at the highest cost possible just the most in the same way also we're four years in and we're still reading the same shit they were saying this shit about super intelligence in 2022 yes they they was promising this bullshit for years and it's still where i people can i i will get an email from one of you people.

49:41Ed Ongweso Jr.:I love most of you. Some of you email me and you're like, well, actually I've proven that this is there. Don't you realize that you could do this?

49:47Chloe Radcliffe:And one person emails with an entire breakdown of Return of the Jedi.

49:52Ed Ongweso Jr.:An explanation.

49:54Chloe Radcliffe:Email me. Email me. My email's on my website. No, you can email me. If you find my email on my website, you can email me. The first sex movies.

50:03Ed Ongweso Jr.:I'm going to wrap this up here. Eddie, where can people find you? um big blackjack a bit on twitter and uh the tech bubble on substack hell yeah and chloe

50:15Chloe Radcliffe:you got a show i am yes i am at chloe badcliffe on all socials like my last name radcliffe but bad and my show is in new york at joe's pub august 19th and 20th it is called cheat and if you email

50:27Ed Ongweso Jr.:me a receipt of your ticket i'll give you a year of the news live wow i mean that's crazy yeah

50:32Chloe Radcliffe:That's amazing.

50:33Ed Ongweso Jr.:It's a good deal. Anyway, thank you all for listening. I'm, of course, Ed Zitron. This has been an inverse week where you've got the big episode at the end of the week versus on the Wednesday. That was because of technical differences. We will be back next week. I think we're going to have Steve Burke. Wonderful Steve Burke of Games next. He's going to return. And we have some really interesting shit for CES 2027. The people in front of me don't even know this. Cal Newport's going to join us. Okay. Wonderful Cal Newport. And we might even have Brennan Lee Mulligan. Oh, fuck yeah. It's going to be fucking great.

50:59Ed Ongweso Jr.:I'm already planning CES 2027. and when I tell people this, they are horrified. They really don't like to hear. D-E-S is like how the years pass for me now. I'm the planner, all right? Listen, as much as I joke about it, you're all incredible. I hear from you every day on the subreddit, on email, on Signal, on even the Bloomberg Terminal. Thank you so much for your support. We're winning, everyone. Thank you all, and I love you all. And kill a delivery robot. Two. I'm not endorsing this.

51:37Ed Ongweso Jr.:Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

52:09Chloe Radcliffe:Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

52:12Ed Ongweso Jr.:For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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