CES 2026: Part Six (Thursday)

24:38Gen X was going like, oh, I can't believe I have to steal my shitty kid who I can't send off to school. I'm right wing now. I mean, that's literally. And also boomers will do the whole thing. We're just going to get people. I'm going to get some emails. There are a lot of boomers who were like, back in my day, I could just walk into a store and say, good sir i'd like a job and they'd say i like the cut of your job boy but the same time and there was a lot of like old people who were like just go and get a job it's that easy the gen x's if you make a post of blue sky and i've done this several times just be like make fun of gen x's being like yeah i get home my parents weren't there so i'd make myself dinner and i'd entertain myself all day every day and i was so independent there will be gen x's who respond and be like yeah that's actually true and you should like they get very personal about it i don't know you live through some of the best music as well like fucking stop i mean we're at we're at ces i mean all the super rich fucking tech assholes are gen xers like yeah but to your idea what you what you were saying thank you back to me back to the millennial correct i think you're absolutely right but also there's other aspects of it and people talk about it it's the way millennials went to school because we went to school in America in this really optimized, like the sort of goals that you had to chase were very specific.

25:58The whole gifted and talented crowd. Like we are seeing basically - Of which I was one. Yes, same. Of which I was not. Yeah. I really was not. Neither gifted nor talented. No, I was not. You see online like the gifted and talented adults. We're like, oh, that was kind of wrong. that maybe kind of broke us in terms of how we go through the world. Do you mean like the high expectations placed on us and the expectation of perfectionism or like how that metastasizes into perfectionism? Exactly, all that. Like we were built for school and for taking tests and then sent to the real world. It's like, oh, what do I do?

26:34And do you think more so than other generations? Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it, like why did all the first internet culture come from millennials? And that's because like Gen X was at the age. there's history there there's history of Gen X I mean the foundation of the internet was done by Gen X I don't know because we're cooler no but I'm talking about like meme culture our lives sorry that's I think I know what you're saying which is that our lives were digital in a way theirs were not here's what's interesting is that we're getting too millennial focused because we're all millennials I guess but also we knew what the world was not me I'm very young thank you good to know Hollywood, cast me in things.

27:16We knew what the world was before the internet. We saw what the world became with the internet. And we're expected to be experts at it post-internet. So we saw the full breadth of it. Yeah, yeah. So that's why like Gen Zers and young kids do not know the world before. And it's kind of tough to describe what that was. We also were children during 9-11 and we entered the workforce in like - Children and teenagers. But yes, the world fell apart. teenagers are still children um 2008 as well like i think that it's understated like because 2008 i moved to america that year and it was very much like it's your fault welcome to america no it happened as i moved not because i don't know um i moved and it was just like oh hey you know that whole thing you were told about you go to college everything will be fine fuck you it's just exactly and i don't think other older generations realize how stark that was how hard like there are gen x boomers probably remember before the department of homeland security existed like and i just think and the expectations of hyper digitization and the constant expectation and notifications stuff like that i think it's really easy to color millennials like oh you're so oh you want your little treats and all this no we're being harassed by i mean everyone is now harassed by everything all the time and we're aware of it yes and we know and we remember it could have been different or we don't remember when.

28:40It's frustrating as well, because by the way, Michael Dell, Gen X. And just to be clear, this is Mr. Dell of the Dell company. One of the richest men in the world, by the way. He's up there. He's also the guy behind Trump Bucks. How have I never heard of Michael Dell? Is he the guy who founded Dell? Yes. It's weird because Dell went through this thing, and we'll rotate shortly, but it's this weird thing where Dell went through this real shithouse era when they were just complete dog shit, their computers sucked, and then they went, took themselves off of the public markets, private again, fixed things, everyone loved them again, and then they went public again.

29:15And then they appeared to be like thinking about being shit, but they're back to being okay. And they bet their whole future on AI. It's just - One of my earliest computers were Dell. And I remember they were really big and then they sort of, everyone else beat them in everything. And then no one wanted it. And they had that really, to me, they had that time period where they were the computer that at least I did. I automatically associated with like the older crowd, older people, because especially as like the gaming PC became big and then building your own PC became big. Dell was still out there.

29:47I feel like doing like old school type marketing to specific audiences during a time period where like everyone was moving beyond that. And then they bought Alienware, which was this insane company where they'd be these, I had a day, my dad, my dad bought me an Alienware once and I fucking loved it. It was this insane, like, I don't know how, like three foot tall giant thing with like a swinging door and a big alien head in there for like a teenage boy with no friends. It was the, it was, this is my super ball. This is your friend. Sorry, what does the alien in the box? It's literally just the gaming PC, but it looked like a tube.

30:20It was more tubes. It's why his wrists are so muscular. God damn it. They just get body shaming me. No, it's, it's interesting though, because hearing them, it just, and as we'll transition into the next episode, obviously. But it's like, it feels like all these companies are having a midlife crisis. And I think, you know what? We're Gen Xers. I was going to say, I mean, like maybe they are. They are. Well, now is the time of the millennial midlife crisis. It's like, give us room. Not for me. I'm very young. Okay. But yes. All right. Get in there. And coming up now, an ad just for Gen Xers. It's going to be for something called latchkey.biz.

31:00It's going to allow you to have a social network where you crow about how you were such an independent child and how you remember when MTV was good. And is actively losing subscribers. No, GenX will email me now and be like, actually, you know what? I watch liquid television and I was cool.

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35:01We're back in the room. We're back with a wonderful cast, of course. Actress and stand-up comedian, Chloe Radcliffe. Yeah. Matt Binder of Mashable. Hey. And Davindra Hardwar of Engadget. What's up? And you know what? I do actually kind of like this Gen X and midlife crisis happening with AI. It kind of makes sense because it's like, you look at all these companies and they're all like fuck how do we keep growing the rock economy i've written and said about but it's also a degree of like wait what do people want anymore because we got so rich because gen x is able to accumulate wealth in a way that millennials couldn't boomers it's all fomo it's all fomo about what's next fomo with disconnection from anyone like that yeah i'm sorry oh it was a rough time during cover we didn't go outside fuck off you could still step outside just once just be like all You know, it's also funny.

35:49I spent all of COVID outside because that's where you didn't get a germ. For a while, it was better to be outside. What are we talking about? Yeah, yeah. It's also just take the laptop outside. Or do you not have an overhead lamp? I don't. That was very stupid. But to what is happening to all these companies, because I've been covering them since 2010. I've been following the tech industry forever. They're all desperate. They're all desperate of missing out on the next big thing because Microsoft missed out on mobile. they tried desperately to kind of get that back like windows mobile all these things making windows eight um but no that was apple that was the smartphone era that was tablets they never quite got into that but they also didn't realize people like pcs people like computers maybe you should double down on that which is what windows 11 was windows 12 kind of became the thing but that was the mobile era then there was like tablets and stuff it's wearables for a while people were hot like oh this is gonna be the next big thing it's a niche it's a very small niche because you wear them, then not everyone wears the same thing, to Matt Binnman's point.

36:48And what's happened is that the world revolves around our phones, because these are the most personal computers we have. It's my best friend. It's your best friend. It holds all your deepest secrets and inner thoughts. It connects you to the world. So how do you go past phone? The next stage of computing to them is, okay, a thing that processes data at obscene levels that we don't fully understand, but it seems like black magic, and that's what AI is. But it's so funny, though, because they're like, well, what do we replace a device that's all about personal stuff and our communication with others and our ability to condense our thoughts and access media we like well what if we took away all personal choice and data entry of any kind would they like that but i actually what you were saying that i just had a thought all these companies missed out on mobile microsoft didn't miss out on mobile they made a shit mobile phone by acquiring nokia and windows phone sucked and it's like why do people like the Mac so much?

37:41Because it was good. Because the UI was good. Why do people like the iPhone? Because the UI was good. It took so long for Android to even be half-assed. Was it T-Mobile G1 was the first? That was the first, yeah. And it was so far behind, and they were so far behind for long. And Windows Phone was an insane... It was just this, like, tiles. It was Windows 8, but in a phone. I will say, it was cool. It was cool because it was different, but they again missed out on some practical functionality. like windows phone the bjork is cool and different but i would not like she misses out on some but i would not i would not be like playing bjork at an nfl game like i wouldn't be playing bjork in a commercial i'm saying that like there are journalists and specifics and it's like something but if we're connecting with broad like middle america yeah yeah i don't think so you're referencing surface now which is at the nfl games oh yeah no the surface it's so funny having surface things there, especially with Aaron Rodgers just smashing them.

38:37But it's like, they don't, they're like, well, what do we do? We'll do a half spin. It's like, make it good, make it good. I can understand, we're going to go into history here for the kids, but Microsoft was making mobile shit for a very long time, right? The IPAC as well, right? The IPAC, all that stuff. But it was BlackBerry era, right? Okay, rewind to like late 90s. It was like personal assistants, right? The PDAs, the Palm Pilots, all those things. Evolution of that was BlackBerry. Microsoft was doing stuff within Pocket PC, and they made a couple ones, but they never really took off. And they were like little laptops.

39:11They were like little keys or like little BlackBerry clones. But you used like a little pen with something? Some of them had like a stylus too, but the thing is BlackBerry was hot because data was bad, and BlackBerry created the technology to have quick digital messaging to all your friends. Go watch the movie BlackBerry, which is not fully historically accurate, but gets the tech right. Jim Bissett, I found on the show. Sorry. But the movie BlackBerry, wonderful, amazing, has one of the guys from It's Always Sunny in there too. And he's just like wonderfully offensive and like really gives his all.

39:41Check out that movie. But BlackBerry Innovators Dilemma came for them because they didn't believe you could have a phone that was all screen. And that was iPhone. Because it's difficult. Wait, you mean like they had considered, they were like, should we make phone all screen? Yeah, because BlackBerry. And they were like, no, no, No, we not make touch screen all keyboard. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Glenn Howerton, who is Dennis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, plays my friend Jim Basile. He reads my newsletter. What a glow up. I remember when I was in high school, the big phone at the time where those like the screen that flips up, the Nokia Sidekick, I think it was called.

40:16Phones were so cool. Before the iPhone, phones had all this like cool stuff. I had a Helio Ocean, which flipped up vertically and also flipped sideways like a sidekick. Amazing stuff. And then the iPhone came out and it was like, okay, all screen, but also apps. Your phone is now a computer. It's not just like a limited thing with garbage version of the internet. It's the full internet. And then cellular speeds got better. So like internet in your pocket, full computer in your pocket. You cannot deny that that's the best thing. so Microsoft just was never able they didn't catch up to that quick enough we talk about Android being shit early on it was but within a couple years they kind of did the Windows thing where Google just like had the software and had other people come and make the hardware and Android took over the world like Android had dominated cell phones smartphones pretty quickly pretty quickly on but it's hard to deny everyone is chasing like what is the next thing they think AI is the next thing and I'm glad that there are people out there like we're looking at this and like this is bullshit This is not good.

41:19Are they sure? Are they really convinced that AI is the thing? What's amazing is that they're not. Right. So Mashable published, I didn't do the interview, but we spoke to Lenovo CEO. And we asked him about people who are anti-AI and AI skeptics. And his answer to that was basically, you can't avoid it. You won't be able to avoid it. And it's like, that's not the answer. But it's also not like a ringing endorsement. Wait, you won't be able to avoid AI? that's not the ringing it's like it's the whole thing of it's inevitable it's inevitable right do you believe in this product well you can't avoid what's coming i mean you know we all die yeah like it doesn't sell it yeah no but it's i think i i in having not read the interview i could imagine being like sort of having the attitude of like i don't who gives a shit if you yeah if you don't believe in this it's happening it's it's happened we've invested billions of dollars and stock is going up deal with it and what who why is it on me to convince you you you can sit there and bang your drum as long as you and i'm i don't mean this to i don't mean to be on ai side but like i i can't imagine sort of being like take it or leave it who gives a shit it's gonna happen i appreciate the honesty the answer but if your job is literally to market it to a journalist like apple if when the iphone first came out and people asked about the iphone like are people really good Apple didn't go like, it's inevitable.

42:40They were like, try it and you'll see. I will say Steve Jobs, famously an asshole. Yeah, you're holding it. Well, no, I'm not saying he was - But he had the product to back him up. The messaging was, you'll get used to it. Like the Apple way was, you'll get used to it. We know better. But that's not what AI is saying. But that's not what AI is saying. It's happening. And the funny thing is about AI as well is if AI was, I can say to my computer, load this, do this. And it actually did it every time. that'd be fucking sick. Well, that's what Microsoft's pitching you with the co-pilot voice man.

43:12Yeah, and they are lying. It doesn't work. They are just lying. I swear to fucking God, I thought public companies couldn't just fucking lie, but they can only do it about numbers. If you're all in the same grift, it doesn't matter, right? And also what we're learning is that rules don't matter. Laws don't apply to the rich and the powerful. But here's the thing. Gravity does, and I think they will all be punished. Mashallah. When the stock was NVIDIA's kind of down today, it's kind of fun to watch. It's also funny as well because none of it really clicks with what users desire. Because what users desire right now is, I wish my phone just fucking worked.

43:44I wish every app didn't need to ping me 14 times a day to say, have you thought about using me? I think just work is the thing. Just work. Just do what I ask you to do. When you're saying that the companies themselves don't even fully believe, what more is there to that? I've talked to a whole bunch of executives. I bring this question to every big company I talk to. Early on, Microsoft was doing Copilot. I was like, this thing doesn't work. You make me want to use Copilot as a search engine, but I cannot trust it. It's not always delivering correct information. If I bought a calculator that said 2 plus 2 equals 5, I would throw it away because it's garbage.

44:22And the Microsoft people were like, it's a work in progress. We're going to get better. And they're making you accept a certain level of bullshit because they can't stop. They've invested too much in it. They practically are invested in half of open AI. So like they can't stop. It's too big and their stock is being rewarded for it. So they can't say anything bad. Okay. And again, just to play devil's advocate and that this is not, this doesn't, the views reflected here are not my own. I can, you know, I look at what AI take image, take image production, for example, what the images that AI could create four years ago versus the images that AI can still still images that AI can create today are unrecognizable between the two.

45:09They're so much better. And when they were producing the dog shit images four years ago, if somebody was like, if I, you know, like if you do the same calculator thing and then they're like, well, yeah, it's a work in progress. And in four years, the calculator is going to say two plus two equals four every single time. Again, I think that that is a fair response. And that's the thing, that's the thing though. This is one I've answered a lot. This is one where I'm like, oh, so that made sense maybe two years ago. So it made sense like, I would say it stopped being rational to do that. Like maybe, I mean, at latest March last year.

45:46So 2025, I would say right up until image generation with GPT, that was when you just went bonk. I know people are going to say nano banana, nano banana. I went an entire day without saying Nana Banana which is now on televisions It's just like I do not know what that word is It's Google's image generation It's like the best one on the market And people are like look it can generate a picture of a woman for some reason that I'm using And she lives in a tube It's like tube generation And they can't answer the basic question about the entire idea of image generation um which is what i but the thing is it's not like it's but the thing is it's not having these meteoric jumps yeah four years ago sort of in 20 yeah you're saying you're saying like the curve is leveling yes so we've reached the point of diminishing returns because the way these models get better is two ways one you feed data into them two you tweak the models by they you basically tweak their outputs you say don't do this do this yeah things with images you're right up against the wall now like they've got about where they can get and their thing they'll say is like look we've made some realistic looking images.

46:55The problem isn't making one realistic image. It's doing the same thing more than once reliably, maybe twice, thrice, a hundred times. It's being able to have a consistent visual image and you can kind of do that, but it takes a shit ton of computational power. And as we run up against the realm of running out of money, that's become the problem. But also most of them have hit diminishing returns because we've run out of data. We are out of data. You mean of feed? of things to feed into the thingy. Slop for the pigs. Well, food for the slop. Food for the pigs too, so they can make the slop. But here's the basic question about image generation.

47:32Like, I don't care how much better it's getting. I don't care who gives a shit about it. Why does this exist? That's the thing with so much of this. Like when we talk about like the calculator that has to get the math problem correct. Well, the use case for that is you need to do math. Yeah. with AI generation and all an AI video image generation and video generation it's sort of just like okay you can do it but what is the purpose like like the TV guys are like oh you can make a wallpaper for your TV I don't I don't turn my TV on for a wallpaper I don't care right yeah it's like who gives a who gives a shit the point for me like like people like oh you can take a picture a selfie of yourself and insert yourself in different well for me like when I want to look at a picture of myself it's because I want to remember that experience that I experienced oh But what if I put myself in an AI image generator and it puts me in front of the pyramids in Egypt, why the fuck do I care?

48:26There's no memory there of me doing that. I saw a really evil one where it's like a guy showing his grandmother with dementia, like a picture of her with Jimi Hendrix. Parody. The following is parody. I think that person should be fucking tortured. No, I'm so glad you brought that up because I have. You should be in fucking, you disgusting fucking monster. Facebook consistently hammers me with recommendations of groups for people who are asking people to like clean up their family photos and stuff. And those groups are now full of people who come in and go, oh, my daughter or grandma or whoever in my family died.

49:03And this is the only photo I have of them. Can you make it color or fix it? And now all the responses are people putting it through the AI image generators. and they spit out things that don't even look like the deceased family member. And some of these people love it. And some people even put them in like the deceased family member picture in a video generator that generates - Just yesifying their grandfather. But it's like, at some point, these image generators are going to distort your memory of the actual person. Totally. Because if you only have one photo of someone and that photo was cleaned up, quote unquote, but it changed how your family member looks and you're constantly looking at that photo, it's going to eventually actually fuck with your real memory of what that person looked like or sounded like for the voice cloning stuff.

49:50And I think that's so fucking unhealthy that we're going to have a world of people who remember their own ancestors as people who did not even exist because they don't have an actual photo in their brain of how they actually look. They had the AI-generated photo of them. I completely agree, and I'm sure that this is already happening. And then I, and this is where I get a little nihilistic. This is where I get a little depressive. I wind up going, my impulse as a millennial who experienced the world pre-ubiquitous internet, my instinct is that like their brains are going to be fucked up by shit like that because, and it feels good in the moment.

50:34And so they keep doing the drug. And why wouldn't you? If the drug dealer keeps coming to your house, of course, it is going to be very difficult to say no. It's much easier to say no when the drug is not inside your house all the time. And so they're going to keep doing the drug. They're going to fuck up the brain. They're going to have this insane relationship with memory and with emotion and with human connectivity. And then I want to say, and at some point, they will, in their heart of hearts, understand that this is bad. In years, decades. Like, I'm not saying, you know, they'll wake up one week.

51:05But like at some point in their old age or in their middle age, they will go, wow, this is bad. I don't know how to describe this. I don't know how to articulate this, but I can feel in my heart that something is disconnected from what the human experience should be. I think that's partially what we're doing right now because people are using these tools and not fully thinking about it. And there are just so many philosophical questions about us. Like how do we process information? How do we process memory? How does this work within our society? What's the anthropological impact of all this falsified information?

51:36Like there's immediate harms of nothing. We can't trust reality anymore. We can't trust anything because they can just make up facts. But also the eventual harms is that the idea of memory is just going to disappear. I mean, another thing I've seen, and this is the really one, really depressing one, like someone will ask for something like they'll post a photo of their child who died at like nine months, three years, whatever. and they'll be like, oh, I'd love to see how they would look if they made it to like 40. And it's like, no, don't do that to yourself. No, no, no, no, no, right, exactly.

52:07Don't do that. You have the actual image or videos of them when they existed and who they were and what they were and just keep that in your memory. Don't look at this person who never will or did exist that they're generating. It's just, oh, it's going to mess with people. And the thing is, all of that photo editing stuff and in particular the new things where you can be like, okay, add a sword to the photo, make him look like Captain America, give my grandmother giant abs, like all of the things that you can do with AI now. All right, now you've got my attention. Yoke my grandma. Phrase to remember.

52:43CES 2026, yoke my grandma. But here's the thing. I genuinely believe all of this is going away. No one other than me is really willing to fully go. I think all of this goes away. I think everything dies within two years. I think that there is going to be the big egg face moment and no one wants to take the logical end point, which is the people who are dependent on these things are not going to have a thingy anymore unless they're going to put DeepSeek R1 on their laptop and wait 30 seconds between responses. Because I think all of this is just, I think every image is like a few bucks. My theory, I'm just, this is gut instinct.

53:18I think it's like a few bucks per image. And I hear MIT Technology Review had an article middle of last year. images are more cheaper than um text but they're still very expensive but nothing's surprised images i was surprised too but it there's i forget the actual thing but all of this like the video generation stuff well that's gone away first so and and sorry that couple dollars per image or whatever is uh for them to produce being paid by open ai or it is yeah for those paying for the GPUs to run. Yeah. And that's another thing though. Most of the AI generated stuff you see out there, not professional work, obviously, but like things people post on social media or whatever.

54:01They're just using like the free version of a lot. Exactly. Because no one wants to actually, unless you're using it again for professional purposes, no one is paying for this. It's yoke my grandma for free. No one wants to pay for the subscriptions. And that's the thing. OpenAI has this big thing. People love to be like, what if they did ads? If you are someone who's emailed me about that, you're like 75 ,000. Wow. What if they did ads? Here's the problem. The information on a great story this week was 900 million weekly active users, though they bullshit those numbers. 800 million of those are outside of the US, thus they're lower value advertising clients.

54:37So yeah, most of them are free. They're just, and the most, and the funny thing is, is even the ones that pay are the most enthusiastic who cost you the most money. OpenAI loses money even on their 200 buck a month one. So the more you like something, the worse you are as a customer. It's usually the opposite. It's usually like your power user of Facebook doesn't cost them that much because it's basic. It's just so the way a website works is like Facebook is. All right, Ed, I know I'm a lady and I know I'm not in tech. No, I'm kidding. So when you should be in a box. So picture a computer. No, no, no, no.

55:13Chloe, don't make me be sarcastic and be like, do you know what Akamai is? So it's when you run a website like Facebook, where you access a page with some videos, the streaming doesn't require, it's like a CPU and like requires storage and RAM like in a big server. That is intensive because they have shit tons of users, but because like shit tons of users, it's just because you have a lot of them. It's not because the process of serving you Facebook or Instagram is super expensive to do. It's expensive because they have so many people. The problem is with AI is that having one user who's particularly demanding is extremely expensive.

55:50It's actually bearing costs on the company. Exactly, because GPUs are extreme. They are cost intensive. They require a lot of energy, but they also put out a shit ton of heat, which requires a bunch of cooling. And the bigger the data center, the more intensive the cooling. And I had someone email me the other day saying, really big data centers can cause like, like gigawatt ones can cause like weather effects with the amount of heat that dissipate. And they're affecting the local like communities. And just to clarify what you were saying earlier, but when you're saying the logical end point of your pessimism about AI or whatever however you want to frame it the logical end point is that all of this goes away You're saying it collapses from a financial standpoint.

56:31But then the logical end point of that is that the companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, whatever, ChatGPT, go, well, we don't have the money anymore to run these data centers. Correct. And the data centers are what are required to, when somebody types in, yoke my grandma. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need the data center to be having to have the electricity on and have the air conditioning running. Yes. And that when somebody's not paying those bills, then I can't get my grandma yoked. Correct. And there's no economic reason to do it because to Davindra's point, the only reason they're doing this right now is because their stock value is growing.

57:07Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, they've seen their stock grow, not because of AI revenues. They don't talk about those, but because AI is so big, so huge, and so yoked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone's talking AI. But the moment, and the thing is, I've heard people say, oh, well, it's a chat GPT bubble. It's not an AI bubble. Here's the thing. Oh. Yeah, it's a really fucking - Why? How does somebody thread that needle? Because they're fucking stupid. No, the argument is that, well, OpenAI is the worst business of all time. It burns money forever. They have no profitability. But all the other ones will be okay.

57:37There will be other winners. The problem is that this is a vibes-based thing. Now, what happens to the vibe when the main business that everyone knows, like 800, 900 million weekly active users, compared to everyone else where they have like 20? Now, you may think you've heard Microsoft say they've got hundreds of millions of copilot users. You've heard Google say hundreds of millions of Google Gemini. That's because they put them in their main products. But even then, their shareholders are just going to go, right, why are you spending all this fucking money on this? Why are you propping up these insanely expensive things?

58:09And if you wonder why I'm so confident about this, none of them talk about the revenues or the costs. The thing also, though, is if AI was to disappear, what do customers, what do consumers lose out? Like what is the - Nobody will care. Yeah. And the things that people may use in their everyday life, like AI transcription or voice-to-text, we're at the point now where those models actually could just live on your personal computer. You don't need an outside server at all. You don't need a company to pay a monthly fee to. You could just download a model. It's a few gigs, and you have your own voice-to-text and your own transcription.

58:46It's that other more intensive stuff that are just like little toys that no one really needs that will just go away. To me, that is the logical outcome, by the way. It's like the big AI will die off to a certain degree. that will lead to widespread economic devastation by the way. That will be hard. It's going to be worse than the great financial crisis in my opinion. It could be worse than the financial crisis. It could be a depression level hit on the world economy. So that worries me. Why? Because all these companies Oh my God. The idea of local AI and stuff that's just like, okay my watch is a little better.

59:23I can transcribe to my computer that lives locally. that does happen. I have one piece of bad news though. The only reason those models are being worked on right now is because of the big ones. And once those big ones go away, they're not going to have any fucking reason to do them. They don't care about transcription. They don't care about the useful stuff. They still need a reason to sell you a new laptop every year. And I don't think this is going to be enough of one. My thing is like, I'm not sure how we're going to intellectually reconcile with this because this is the world pants shitting competition.

59:55Well, it's also, everything is so fucking stupid right now. Like, every level, if you, we've been in the CS bubble, but looking at the wider world right now, it's so dumb. Like, we, Trump invading Venezuela was how we started this year. I was born in Guyana, South America, the country right next to Venezuela. And it's probably right next on, like, because they just found oil. So, Exxon is, like, just out there taking all that stuff right now. Put it back. We didn't find anything. Things are so stupid right now. So that's why I do kind of feel like, yes, we're going to see this. And I know this sounds hard to reconcile with.

1:00:30I think this is going to be stupider just because, hear me out. Every major CEO has added AI, has talked about AI. All they talk about is AI. Every major tech company, AI, AI, AI. And a bunch of people we work for, not me personally, but tons of people we work for, people have said that AI is the future. World leaders, AI is the future. Everyone said AI is the future. And I think all of them are wrong. What are we meant to do with that information? Because this is Trump politics. Okay, there's voting. There's like a process. This is like - For now. Sure. But the foundations of economic movement, but also knowledge in the world and consensus reality and paradigms themselves have been based on the idea that the people running the money, people running businesses are somewhat intelligent.

1:01:17That would not be fucking wrong. And what's become obvious is almost nobody knows anything ever. And I don't mean this in the cutesy, like, oh, bosses don't know stuff. I mean, these people have just been fucking wrong, like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Just like AI will do this. But it's not just AI. I will tell you, like when I started covering technology and doing journals, and I was mainly like writing about startups at the time, I was like, oh, cool. These guys, their ideas are so interesting. They've gotten billions of, usually millions of dollars of investment. I was talking to, you know, Kevin Sestrom and the Instagram guys when it was just four dudes.

1:01:51I was like, oh man, they must be so smart and so interesting. No, usually not. Usually it's just like you're a nerd who knows how to code who came up with one interesting idea and the VCs were just throwing money at you. And even when it comes to big business in general, people rise to the top, not often through their skill. It's through they've been there long enough or they're a good enough company shill. AI is just the logical outcome of all of that. Imagine if the great financial crisis, Microsoft was in housing, Google was in housing, Amazon was in housing, Disney entered housing. Everyone bought houses and everyone was selling houses and everyone was offering mortgages.

1:02:28Everyone did mortgages. Mortgages were the future of every single business in the entire world. Everyone on LinkedIn was saying, I'm a housing expert now. That is it. Except when they said housing, they meant cat litter boxes. Because I'm joking, but it's like, what if everyone was like wrong, wrong, wrong in a way that's not political? It's just obvious that so many people we thought were smart were just like able to do Mad Libs. I have a question about the leaders who have backed AI. Right. Okay. As I see it, there's two categories that I understand. And I'm going to ask about what is the middle category.

1:03:06Category that I understand is tech CEO whose company has some vested financial interest in AI being successful. Right. Totally get it. Absolutely. Why would Google add Gemini to all of their products? Great, because they see a potential financial benefit. Fine. Yeah, they were also – Google is holding off. Google is trying to be cool and chill about it. And then OpenAI kind of blew the doors open and they had to rush everything out. Sure. Okay, that category I understand. Then CEOs of companies who have been sold the lie of AI can make your whole company work better. That I also completely understand.

1:03:48Like, you know, Salesforce saying, I guess this is sort of an example of the middle cutlery. Somebody at Salesforce being like, we're going to add AI and AI is flashy and sexy and that's a new and it's the best thing. And then turning to Home Depot and being like, now you should pay us extra because our new Salesforce category or our new Salesforce product has AI and that's going to make your life better. And Home Depot goes, great, awesome. We'll pay more for that. That I understand. Like, I understand the - But even those don't truly make sense. But keep going. Right, right, right, right. And I like disagree with the efficacy, but I understand the messaging.

1:04:27What CEOs or what companies have added AI, trumpeted AI, you know, championed AI that are not in the category of their company is a direct financial benefactor to the technology or like a direct owner of a version of the technology? Disney, Disney, right, right, right. Okay. Being one of the most journalist outlets and they will claim, oh, AI will generate stories. They don't. And I'll actually push back on the things with Salesforce because there's a really cool thing. Well, Salesforce, I will choose another company in my head. Salesforce is so special, but like a software company in this case, the really simple thing I'll say to that is even they don't make sense because it don't work.

1:05:07It don't do that. Like it don't, it don't do it. It don't do thingy. Like you say the whole thing Copilot is sold on doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's never worked. I do. It works enough. No, it doesn't. It is good enough for people to be using it. My issues are you're a computer. You should be. My man, I got to push back. It doesn't. There have been like eight different stories in the last year where Microsoft's 365 co-pilot can't do things like prepare PowerPoint. Oh, yeah. It's like specific failures. Yes. But on the general failures. Yeah. On the general. What's it like the general? What I'm saying is like you ask co-pilot.

1:05:44or you ask Gemini a question and it will get you a response that is good enough. It's like, hey, make me a chart of this data. Hey, that actually works. A lot of that stuff does work. I've used it many times. But it's untrustworthy. That's the thing. That means it doesn't work. No, no, no. But there are variations of how badly it doesn't work. But the thing is, if there's a variation of how well something works, that just means it doesn't work most of the time. Sure, but you're applying - There's a reason hundreds of millions of people are still using them. Yeah, because they're being pushed into by everybody.

1:06:14But people like using, for them, the degree of as good enough as it can be. For them, it's good enough. That's why we're pushing back, though, and we're saying, you can't trust this data, you can't trust this stuff. They're not thinking about that, but they're just using it. So we'll continue this debate. It's not really a debate, we're all agreeing. Shortly after this break, this next ad is for specifically boomers. It's called, Where's My Pills? There's someone who will be really angry at this one. They're in the draw, mate. I'm I'm I'm I'm Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-IHEART to get started.

1:07:19That's 844-844-IHEART. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow. It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Dallarocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down. We listen. We learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey.

1:08:11Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

1:08:40to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kelly, and some of you may know me as Laura Winslow.

1:09:26And I'm Thelma, also known as Aunt Rachel. If those names ring a bell, then you probably are familiar with the show that we were both on back in the 90s called Family Matters. Kelly and I have done a lot of things and played a lot of roles over the years, but both of us are just so proud to have been part of Family Matters. Did you know that we were one of the longest-running sitcoms with a Black cast? When we were making the show, there were so many moments filled with joy and laughter and cut up that I will never forget. Oh, girl, you got that right. The look that you all give me is so Black.

1:09:58All Black people know about the look. On each episode of Welcome to the Family, we'll share personal reflections about making the show. Yeah, we'll even bring in part of the cast and some other special guests to join in the fun and spill some tea. Listen to Welcome to the Family with Thelma and Kelly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:10:25And we return to our scene. I'm now joined by Edward Ungreiser Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter. Hello, my friends. Chloe Radcliffe, of course, the actress and stand-up comedian. Who? It's you. And of course, DaVinci Hardware of Engage. Hello. And I think we're in an interesting point in the show where we're all getting to the end and we're realizing we have to go back to the real world. And there's this thing of this AI thing and this whole situation where, and to get back to the debate we were just having, it's like, yeah, it kind of works. but I don't think that people realize that because it only kind of works when they start charging what it actually costs, which is like probably two to five to 15 times what they're charging.

1:11:07No one's going to want to pay for the half-assed thing anymore. And no, many will not be able to pay for it at all. Like I was saying yesterday, like a lot of these companies that are just thing bolted onto LLM die just immediately. Like just, they will turn to dust because imagine if the core fuel of a car of course like double tripled quadrupled in value in cost of course i okay interesting proposition here uh do you think two questions do you think that uh ai companies will start charging subscription rates uh before the financial implosion that you predict Yeah. I think that, well, you've already kind of seen signs.

1:11:53They're very unfair with this. No one likes this one. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have added priority processing to their API customers. API just refers to, instead of you or me using like Chad, GPT, or Claude, you as a company would connect your software with an API to their service and then run on top of it. Now, when you run something on top of these models, you're effectively just prompting them. API stands for a pretty big interface. I, I, there you go. Yeah. That's the new one. Yeah. My brain couldn't think of the real one, so I can't make fun of anyone. Um, but it's like those companies cannot survive with a product, with a cost race.

1:12:30And I had a reader listen, uh, listener and reader reach out and actually tell me that you need priority processing if you're above a certain thing. So just your cost double there or magically. And I think the, the other thing that people will say is, Oh, the cost of models is coming down. Classic talking point, Jensen Huang and his NVIDIA thing, his press conference said, oh, the cost of models is coming down. Yeah, but it's kind of like if the cost of fuel came down a bit, but your journey to work took 15 times longer. Because now, when you use a new model, it isn't just spitting out an output.

1:13:02It's using models that use more computational power to give you slightly better results. So it may be cheaper. But it takes longer? Well, it's not that it takes longer. It uses more tokens, just for simplification's sake. Sure. The thing that they generate to give you an answer, it uses a reasoning model which uses more tokens to do the output. So while it might be cheaper on a token basis, you're using more of the fuckers, so it's not cheaper at all. It's actually more expensive. Yeah. We can argue a lot about the AI industry. That's going to be an unending thing. I will say we are seeing the direct impacts of the rise of AI, right?

1:13:38Go on. Talk about memory in the PC market. Oh, the fucking HBR. The memory. I'd love to talk about this. RAM prices have increased by three to four times across the board. Which is insane. And that'll affect everything. That affects phones, computers, whatever. Cars. Like everything has RAM. Because car is computer now? Yes. But any device needs some sort of memory. What is interesting is like we are seeing the direct impact of that already. Dell's XPS 14, which should be a computer that costs under$1 ,500 because of what it is, and that's what the competition is. And that was about the pricing Dell gave me when I first wrote my post.

1:14:13They said$1 ,600. Next day, an update. That thing is going to start at$2 ,050. Jesus Christ. Because of RAM. They're not going to say why, but I would logically think that is going to be the highest cost for a lot of new systems. That is insane. It's a premium ultra-bordable Shure. That thing should cost under$1 ,500 or about$1 ,500. So we are going to see similar premiums like that. Are you saying if you need to get a new computer, do it now because it's only going to get worse? Do it immediately and maybe buy used or refurbished, which is my recommendation for everything. Interesting. But yeah, buying a new system this year is going to suck.

1:14:48So we're going to do an episode on this next week with Steve Burke from Games Nexus. Oh, nice. So RAM, in Random Access Memory. A website is. Yeah. No, no, no. This is the thing. No, I want this. I don't know. But also, the best lesson Sophie and Robert gave me is explain everything. Because even if you think you know something, you don't. So RAM is when you quickly need information to do a task on a computer. So you couldn't access the hard drive. No matter how fast the hard drive is, it's not fast enough to get something immediately. AI services are extremely demanding on something called high bandwidth RAM, which is just allowed you to keep a bunch of stuff in the RAM so you can constantly access it, because that's how LLMs work.

1:15:26Someone's going to email me and say, I truncated that, shut the fuck up. But it's nevertheless, because of the demands of NVIDIA building GPUs, of Broadcom building their own bullshit GPUs, AMD building their own bullshit GPUs, the price of RAM across the world has increased. Now, eagle-eared listeners may think, I heard a story, Edward, about OpenAI taking 40 % of the world's RAM. This story is bullshit, and everyone pushing it is a fucking liar. If you look on SK Hynix and Samsung, so OpenAI did a deal, quote-unquote, with SK Hynix and Samsung, two companies out in Asia, where they were going to get hundreds of thousands of wafers of RAM, just the things that you cut up into RAM, which is insane on its own.

1:16:09But it was a letter of intent, which is a concept of a deal. It's like if you and I email and say, why don't we do this? It means fucking nothing. And everyone's trying to blame that. No, what it is is just every GPU, anyone doing anything with GPUs is just buying all the RAM. The new NVIDIA supercomputer, the Vera Rubin thing, I hate that they're using these actual names to apply to these things. It seems so disrespectful. But 1.5 terabytes of RAM in this Vera Rubin supercomputer. And that's this. So it's like... Wait, say that again. AMD, 1.5 terabytes of high bandwidth memory. 1.5 terabytes per how many GPUs?

1:16:49I'm going to have to look into the specifics here. There's a lot of GPUs in it. But I believe it's in the full thing. And sorry, not to be a woman who doesn't work in tech about this. No, this is actually very annoying. So supercomputer named after a lady, and we think it's disrespectful. Yes, tell me the name again. Vera Rubin. Vera Rubin. Okay, the Vera Rubin computer is a big box, and it's really powerful. And inside, there's a smaller, there's a little shoe box that you can keep all the little random things. Yeah. And like little smaller computers are all tied together. Yes. Tied together.

1:17:18Okay. RAM is like one box where you have all sorts of random things that you might just need. It's like a chip. I know. I know. But I'm just, I'm picturing it in my head. If you imagine like city block, right? Different blocks or different components. The RAM is the streets in between them to deliver information. Okay. Awesome. So more RAM, bigger streets, high bandwidth RAM, faster streets, faster traffic. So that's the basic thing. It's just a shit ton of data. That's what AI needs. Oh my God, it's 1.5 terabytes per fucking rack. Oh, per rack. And there's a lot of racks in there. There's a lot of racks in there.

1:17:55A fucking data center will be full of like hundreds of things. Racks on racks on racks. Literally. Okay, but hold on. Why is RAM a limited resource? There are only three companies in the world that make it. Ed, you can have – No, no, please, please. No, you go ahead. But that's basically it. There are only three companies. And nobody expected – they were fine. We were fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And nobody expected that, why do you need so much goddamn RAM? Nobody was prepared to do this. Yeah, yeah. And is RAM a physical thing that somebody makes? Yes. So the preparation – I'm going to fuck this up slightly.

1:18:27So, DaVinci, please correct me if I get something wrong. I am not an architecture guy. So there's a company called TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. I think I get that. I also I respect companies that are just like what's your name business company yeah like fuck yeah just tell me what you do they have these things called fabs and they basically build chips and there's a whole fucking supply chain of how chips are made you get wafers of ram you cut them up sounds delicious isn't wait wait you get no you get like a big sheet of you get a big sheet of memory yeah and then you cut them up making chips is fucking cool but you're saying the wafer is a certain amount of chips you print the sheet you make a sheet of a thousand chips and then a wafer is a hundred chips.

1:19:05Yeah, a wafer is just the thing that you carve into chips, but really simple, just, you don't need to know that, Pip, just really simple. There is a limited amount of machinery to build RAM. There are, what, there's SK Hynix, Samsung, and who else who makes them? Marvel. There's like three companies who make RAM. And we can't make more machines to make RAM. There's just limited space. It's going to take a long time to spin that up. One important detail. So making chips in general requires something called a clean room so think about any scientific process that cannot be interfered with by any contaminants growing mushrooms in your garage right um pretty close take it 300 steps higher where it's just like if a single speck of dust gets in there you fuck up millions hundreds of millions of dollars like it's really you have massive things and to run these machines requires very specific talent that we don't have enough of but also there's only a certain amount of space in the world so we're just we're at the limits and while they're building more fabs where you build these things there's only so much and right now we have these fucking assholes who are like i need 1.5 terabytes to give you an idea like i think this uh iphone air has eight gigabytes of ram a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes of them correct yeah correct great stuff so it's just like you have one big asshole taking all the chips now back to my i worry about the collapse thing we're gonna have we have all of this allocation being done for one company what happens when those aren't selling anymore we're gonna just have fucking chaos but until then the price of ram is going to keep going up and it's going to be harder to get which will make it more expensive which will make every single consumer device more expensive without exception And again, just to ask the stupid question, when we say the price of RAM is going up, I could equivalently say the price per RAM chip is going up.

1:20:57Yes, exactly. Okay, great. And it's like, it's a very simple supply chain thing. It's like if the price of wheels went up, cars would become more expensive. I realize that's a silly, but like it's a very simple thing and it's affecting everything. That's what pisses me off. Yeah. Because we can debate about how useful AI is, but the direct impact to consumers right now, people building PCs, anybody buying a new computer, you're going to be screwed in 2026. And I'm working on a piece right now about that. Tell us more. It's the same thing. AMD also announced their new high-end supercomputer AI servers.

1:21:31Also gobs of RAM. So yesterday I sat down and I talked with one of the AMD executives about what is the state of the computing industry? How do things look? And they admit it's going to be rough. If you're a PC owner and you're going to do an upgrade, you're probably not going to build a whole new PC this year. Maybe you'll just do a processor upgrade or GPU upgrade or something. Even those are going to get expensive. But I think they're expecting a slowdown in this industry too. So it's going to be tough. And the solution can't even just be used and refurbished because those prices are going to go up.

1:22:03And we're seeing the after effects of that actually outside of this. So weird example, but we also don't have enough power. So gas turbines, which they're using to power some of these data centers, which you should not do, but they're doing anyway, are actually sold out for seven years. So they're buying old used gas turbines. I wouldn't be surprised if the used RAM market gets fucked too. It's already getting bad. Hell yeah. I mean, someone stopped making consumer RAM, right? Was Corsair? Micron. Micron, my bad, sorry. So, and I feel bad. And Micron owned Crucial. and I feel bad because Crucial was like the first Ramstick I bought when I was building a computer and I have memories attached.

1:22:40My bigger worry, though, is they're lighting up nuclear power plants for this bullshit. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried more about the gas turbines. The gas is bad. Because nuclear power will get filleted. That's going to be a big fight, but we should have invested more in nuclear power. It may be too late, but I don't know. Hold on. You're saying bad to light up nuclear power plants because these are old things that might not be in good enough shape? Well, it's just more like... You're not anti-nuclear power. I'm not anti-nuclear power. We need that power for other stuff. And this power should be going to residential uses, and it's literally going to be sucked up by bullshit.

1:23:18But it's also... And why are the gas turbines bad? Because gas turbines are basically car mode. No, they're not the same, but they have the same after effect of belching out gas. And Elon Musk's data centers are already ruining black communities because of this very specific thing. They're poisoning water. It's really fucking horrible. But also this RAM thing, I think is going to be everywhere. And the PC industry was already in decline, I believe they were. No, it was last year. It was up. They actually got up. I thought they were having it. My bad. No, but only Dell was down. But here's the thing.

1:23:50For reasons we discussed. Surely won't everyone be down because more expensive. And Apple smartphone sales, like every bit of this is going to be bad. and they are already running out of ways to sell you a phone my biggest example being like this why else would they ship apple intelligence which is the most mass radicalization event i've seen in tech just i've never met so many people like fuck ai than people who use apple intelligence yeah who just like fuck this shit i fucking hate this why i don't know why my phone is like sparkly rainbows and just wrong all the time and giving me a summary saying like eight ubers are coming your way the notifications are bad.

1:24:28Apple wouldn't be doing that if other people weren't chasing all this bullshit, but they're being forced into it. And, you know... But are they being forced into it? They are kind of being forced into it because... Like, why could they not be like... Because everyone talks... Shareholders. Stock prices. Yeah. Shareholders stock prices. Everyone's like, oh man, Apple's slow to AI. I guess Apple doesn't have the innovation charm anymore. Looks like someone didn't shit their pants yet. Yeah. So Apple rushed out Apple Intelligence. They got out there. They announced a super smart Siri thing, which was not...

1:24:55They couldn't ship it. So they took a hit for that. They took a hit for the intelligence issues. Again, they were forced into that in a way. And hey, I blame them for the issues. But if Apple left its own devices as a company that is really slow about pushing and trying to change new things, I think they would at least try to make it less error-prone. And the point I was making was that Apple shoving Apple intelligence in there was a sign that Apple doesn't really have anything else. And I will say this, people get so mad when I like my devices. people i get little emails of people being like fucking shill when i'm just like yeah i like my phone and they're like fucking piece of shit but it's like apple phone good use it i don't know i would love an apple phone with great aspects of apple intelligence other than the liquid liquid ass the new operating system that is so bad it makes me want to scream but it's like it's just because we're and it's not because of apple being a bad company necessarily it's just there's only so much you can do with a certain form factor your phone can only do so much but there are things like hey, voice memos, instantly transcribed now.

1:25:53That is sick. Sick for notes. Text to voice notes getting transcribed. That's fucking great. That's on Google as well. You can hit a button on recorder calls now and those get transcribed. That's happening because of an on-device AI model. So that's great. And that shit's dope, but that shit don't make growth happen. But also, everyone does that now. And that's the problem. It's like, how do you sell a new phone? So they're in this situation where, how do we sell a new phone? At a time when they're going to have to increase the prices on everything, because RAM is more expensive. because to make a new phone faster, you need RAM.

1:26:23And also to fit models onto your phone, you need more RAM. You need more RAM because those models sit in memory and have to sit there and work all the time. They can't just like come off the storage disk. Do you remember in like 2020, 2021, the supply chain crisis? That was caused by like basic goods being delayed. This is kind of like that for computer. And we're going to see how many things have computer in it. Televisions, phones, cars. I mean even the thing we're recording on right here that that has ram in it that everything has ram on it that has any electronics these days that's my big worry of 2026 is basically we're screwed when it comes to consumer tech but the thing is it will be for prices screwed for prices screwed for all sorts of things but when yeah oh sorry keep going well companies may die out like things like things will just be bad but yes prices is going to be where it starts and the other thing is is that we're at a point when they're there as you've seen you're at the consumer electronics show you've had a very egregious example of how these companies do not have a fucking clue what to sell you they're still they're half-heartedly coming up with ideas like the death of a relationship it's like yeah we're gonna go put a recall guess on we fucking hate each other we're gonna go it's gonna be so happy everyone's trying to come up with a little idea to do something with and at a time when they're struggling for ideas to sell more things to grow the core thing they use to build the thingy is becoming more expensive in a way that you can't circumvent there is no way to fix this good example would be so nvidia i may have mentioned this in the previous episode so nvidia crazy thing 88 of their revenue comes from selling these things for data centers a much smaller percentage comes from selling gpus for gaming devices so an xbox for example the problem is with that is they've already raised the price on the xbox they're probably going to have to do it again and those gpus now nvidia also has deals with other companies where they can take an nvidia gpu for gamers and they can sell it they can say it's an nvidia gpu but it's got our label on it we do special things with it problem nvidia is no longer including ram with it so every single non-nvidia gpu company has to now buy ram separately so their supply chain just got fucked up imagine if you're a car company and you buy a certain block of car and it has certain bits but you customize it and they're like yeah man sorry we just don't do steering wheels here anymore they got real expensive you're gonna have to buy them from the steering wheel guy who is now charging more that's already happened yeah to some degree to stuff like lidar and things like there were there was technology that was in teslas like this is core to uh autopilot and self-driving and then like how it expensive yeah but here's the thing though this is a really simple thing though this is just the like part of the motor this is the core component of the entire computing supply chain everywhere that is going to go up we're going to see to your point of indra shit just get more expensive and see who can withstand that pain I mean, what do you think the chances are that inflation actually causes some kind of spark, conflagration, before the financial collapse of the AI's borrowed money collapse?

1:29:39This will likely lead to the inflation. Yeah. Borrowed money collapse. This is a form of inflation, honestly, on the compute industry. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying – no, no, sorry. That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying like you've talked about the financial collapse of, of the AI system of borrowing money. Yeah. Yeah. That could go bad. Yes. If, if. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, no, don't be. No, this is good. This is, this is like playing a clarinet solo in front of everybody. Okay. That could, That financial collapse could trigger if NVIDIA stops. Fuck, we were just talking about this last night.

1:30:21Yeah, if NVIDIA stops, most of NVIDIA's revenue comes from people borrowing money. Yes. With borrowed money. Yes. And if people, I mean, if the banks ever come calling for that borrowed money. They're in doo-doo land. Yes. Or if NVIDIA stops, if their, what is it? If their numbers go down, but what numbers? If their revenues stop growing. If their revenues stop growing. Okay. That's the like financial system collapse. What do you think the chances are that this inflation just hits like general populace so severely before the actual, before the NVIDIA financial. I mean, it's already happening. With this computer.

1:31:00I understand. But like, but like so severe, you know, people are just, people are just living through it right now. I think I get what you're saying. It will cause two, two gut punches. It will be likely before the AI bubble bursts, we will have a thing where anyone selling consumer electronics or even enterprise hardware, so just consumer electronics for the enterprise, their costs go up. So they will probably sell less because their customers will be unable to afford as much, which will cause a bunch of tech companies to not make as much money, which will lower the values of their stocks. this will then lead them to go AI, AI, AI and then their shareholders will go great, you've been saying that AI bullshit for three years you got any money?

1:31:41and they'll go what if I told you I had less money because it lost me and at that point the world pan-shitting competition will end I guess I listen to all of this and I actually get my gut which means almost nothing because I understand almost nothing of it but my gut says that the thank you that the inflationary effects are going to actually be more immediate than the AI bubble. I agree fully. And I guess I don't mean like, duh, yeah, they're happening now. But I mean like some degree of severity that people decide is not tolerable. Yeah. Will happen before the AI bubble. Sorry, we barely brought you into it.

1:32:28No, no, no, you're good. But I mean, I think, I mean, this raises me to something I've just been wondering, where it feels like we just keep coming up into this problem where we are having structural limitations imposed or rushed up against because the sector in one way or another is forcing allocation of resources, allocation of capital. Demands of growth. Yeah, demands of growth, allocation of energy to satisfy it. So, you know, at what point does it end where, you know, we have a shortage of power, now we have a shortage of RAM that seems to be in the short and medium term fundamentally unfixable?

1:33:08It is. And it's the demands of eternal growth. It really, it's just, because here's the thing, we talk about a lot this week about we just want to compute the works. Yeah, that isn't going to grow the company guaranteed 20 % year over year every single quarter. and it sucks because you should just be able to have a company that grows 3 % every quarter. The stock market should like that, but they don't. And as a result, when things consume, they must consume eternally, to your point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best example of this recently is the Instant Pot, right? Oh, yeah. Love an Instant Pot. Everybody loves an Instant Pot.

1:33:40It's too good. It's so good, nobody needed to buy new Instant Pots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instant Pot went out of business. Well, because they got bought by private equity. Yeah, that too. And it must grow forever. So they couldn't hit that mass growth because Instant Pot too good. It just works. A pressure cooker is a pressure cooker. Yeah, and they were one of the first digital ones, but it works and it works well. So sorry, you couldn't grow fast enough. You're dead. And it sucks because, I don't know, I have this somewhat, I don't know, maybe this is not nihilistic. Would they have died if private equity hadn't bought them?

1:34:12No. Probably not. They were private. Yeah. They were private. They could just keep chugging along. They could keep doing your thing. If you're a private company, you don't have shareholders. Well, I guess you have investors, but you don't have shareholders saying you have to grow. You don't have fucking Jim Cramer up your asshole. And it's unfortunate, but I think that there is a level of this. Honestly, I'm glad you brought this up. I think the thing that happens before the AI bubble is just the ultimate slowdown. Because the fact that it's kind of insane that Dell did such a big song and dance last year and then were like, actually, JK, I'm kidding.

1:34:50That was a bit. Because they hit him where it hurts. Yeah. They directly saw falling sales and they could draw the line to the rebranding because of that. They're like, oh shit, what do we do? We got to refocus on consumers. Which is so bizarre though. If only people loudly told them that this was a mistake from the beginning. If only there were articles at engadget.com that they could have read in detail last year. But it's like, that's really, like, this is very bad. This RAM crisis. This is bad. It's so, I'm really glad you brought this up because it's so scary. What now then happens with, because I think something that we've talked about also is, I think, you know, kind of like what you were saying off the top, the financial element of the AI bubble is one that we can see it for what it is, but that there are a multitude of ways in which they've been able to juggle, find some new frontier of growth.

1:35:46Yeah, justify. But these structural issues that we keep coming across feel non-negotiable. So what effect do you guys see them as being risk of some sort of breaking point? Yes. In terms of the AI infrastructure overbuilt, in terms of adoption amongst consumers? I mean, like, let's say that nothing happens in terms of degradation of the financial conditions. Is the structural limitations that we're seeing now with the RAM sufficient to impose like a crisis? This is basically what I'm – you're saying it so much more eloquently than what I'm asking, but that's basically exactly what I'm asking. Chloe, you're too rude about yourself.

1:36:30You were completely on the money. You were also, Ed. Here's the thing, and I think, Devindri, you have some thoughts on this as well. You can get more debt. Money can be found elsewhere. The Singaporean, what is the country's fund? I should remember the name for that. They're going to invest in Anthropoc. More money can be found. There's a limit, but we're not at it yet. There are limits to power. And here's the thing. 1.5 fucking terabytes per, I'm going to guess, VR200, 88, GP, whatever. but the tower. That's what I was going to guess. Of course, you're constantly like, the GB300 is$4.5 million, Ed.

1:37:10How the hell do the economics work? What do you mean a data center REIT, Ed? I don't get this. People are saying that the cost of inference is going down. Ed, it's going up. I'm saying it every day. Ed, let's talk about high bandwidth RAM. You're constantly in my text with this. Yeah, I won't get on it. You just won't stop talking about models. No, but it's just real simple. NVIDIA's are saying, we're going to build the biggest fucking hugest tower ever. And by the way, it's full of more RAM than ever. They haven't announced the price of their new big enterprise GPUs. I think they're going to be catastrophically more expensive because they have more RAM than ever.

1:37:47It's like everything, including the thing that needs debt, the borrowed money to keep going, is going to get more expensive. Consumer devices are going to get more expensive. To your point, Ed, it's like, yeah they've been able to get away with it because you can find more venture capital money you can find more debt you can find more assholes to loan you money you can't find more ram you can't find more power is not something you don't just like plug into the fucking wall there are literal limits and it's like we're now we're now seeing the after that i can't get over the fact they raised the laptop space 500 bucks yeah that's fucking insane that is overnight is that makes it unaffordable for most people that's that is a huge and this is this stops people upgrading and upgrade cycles of what make these companies live and die at a time when there's less you can get a laptop from you even i could get like an m3 macbook air and be pretty fucking happy i'm using a three-year-old macbook pro and it fucking bangs is that shit that shit's that shit's flying i don't computer that works yeah but the thing is why would i upgrade and that's actually like that sounds like a cutesy thing so that's actually a huge question because i'm a like a tech pig like i i'm a hog i love my laptops and my good my doodads and my gizmos and shit and i'm like i don't fucking need new laptop why would i need that it's going that is a good problem like that is usually it's good for consumers it's good for consumers it's a good it's you made a good product that lasts.

1:39:21Unfortunately, that is bad for your overall revenues, but that's good that you are capable of doing that. I wish more companies were capable of doing that, honestly. I'm also thinking about where we are. The climate crisis isn't slowing down. All these companies that for so long we're talking about, we have all these climate goals, we're going to reduce energy, we're going to be more conservative. Once AI shit started happening, they shut up because all their stuff blew away. That didn't matter anymore because it was all AI all the time. And yeah, the world right now is going to be more expensive when it comes to gadgets.

1:39:56The world in the future is going to be hard to live in because of all the stupid decisions happening right now. And I'm so angry about all of it. And we are now going to transition to our final 30 minutes of this episode. This next one is brought to you by GenZ.biz. Now, it's just a store where you can just buy Zin to your door. I don't actually know what Zin is. If you're one of my three Zoomer listeners, please email me what Zint is and how you consume it. And can you tell me what's cool as well? I haven't known what that was for 10 years.

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1:42:10We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one, or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us.

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1:44:11And we're back in the room. We're back in the room. We've got the Vindra Hardewa from Engadget. We've got Edward Ngueso Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter. Hello, hello. And we've got Chloe Radcliffe, actress, star of Is This Thing On. I got targeted on Instagram. Star is real generous. There's a lot of heavy lifting. No, what's great was the clip I got was like Cradley Booper being talked to, sorry. Will Earn It. Will Earn It. Thank you, Christ. And going like, yeah, I'm in stand up. and Cradley Booper going, what? Anyway, stand-up comedian, Chloe Radcliffe. And yet we're back talking about Ram and the slowdown.

1:44:47And I'm going to be honest, I know it seems bad now and it will be bad. The tech industry needs this. The tech industry needs to be punished for the growth lust because there's no sustainable future doing this. And this was also inevitable. And I think it's scary. So then is the – if ideally what delays on the products that are the most RAM intensive to give infrastructure a chance to fill a backlog and to give the next generation – There are rumors that they may revive old hardware. There's a rumor that NVIDIA's RTX 3060, which is a two, three-year-old GPU, may be back in market soon because it's using older, slower RAM too.

1:45:32So it's not using the newest, fastest stuff. Is it a less powerful GPU? Yes. Way less powerful, but it's also like... It's like two generations back. It is a sign that you have to bring back the past because the present is unaffordable and you cannot make it. So I don't know. That's never happened before. Yeah, I've never heard of that. We don't know if this is true, but this is the rumor that's out there. I thought that was confirmed. I'm glad you said it was a rumor. Yeah. So I, okay, as my responsibility as a layperson, I then think about how do normal people experience this? Because normal people have heard AI a million times.

1:46:11We've heard RAM is getting more expensive. But like, I think I'm smart and I didn't know any of this shit. I've heard these words, but I don't know the details. And so as a representative of normal people, as stuff gets more and more and more expensive, So far, the American population has just borne the load of more expensive life. People complain about it. It's very frustrating. It negatively impacts people's physical health and their ability to enjoy life. But pretty much everybody has just sort of gone. Well, the people who can afford it eat the cost. But then we don't hear about the people who do it.

1:46:51But there's also a limit. Finish your question. Yes. but I think the people who can't afford it eat the cost too in other ways here's the thing you're saying that for now there is a limit and what it is is people are eating the cost in as much as they can at some point there's a limit because there are people who wear Apple's AirPod Max I don't really think that's a regular person it's like 500 bucks but those have RAM modern headphones have RAM in it. There are headphones that have RAM in them. Even cheap laptops have RAM in them. Everything has RAM in it. So yes, the cost of everything already went up and never came down.

1:47:33There is a point when people will just stop buying new electronics at all. And I have a thesis. Okay. So there's a point where people will stop buying new electronics at all. And then there is some further point at which people will draw a line at inflationary prices overall, whether it's in electronic, whether it's in whatever. Because I'm sure that RAM shortages are going to affect things that don't have RAM in it because the things that are used to ship those things have RAM in it. You know, it's like, right, I can imagine that this impacts prices overall. And what we have seen in trend lines is that once prices go up, they stay up.

1:48:10They don't come back down for the most part. So, yeah, that might actually not happen with RAM. I think because if they, my, my real crazy scenario and no one wants to think about is AMD, Nvidia buying all this Ram. What the fuck they do with it when no one wants to buy their bullshit anymore. All of these companies that have built massive allocations for Ram won't have any use. Yeah. But other like consumer goods, I think once those prices go up, they don't tend to come down. The thing is if no one's buying them, they will have, because what we're talking about here isn't just like the top crust.

1:48:40It's everything. But so far people are still buying them. They are for now. People are tightening belts, but I think a lot of people are just spending way more money than they would have been five or two years ago and not saving. You're living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net. Right. It's rough. But I think a lot of people are paying the higher prices rather than not buying the items. Yeah, to a certain degree. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you need it. I do think we get to look at this culturally too, because people don't just sit down and read business news and make logical business decisions as economists think we do.

1:49:20I think we respond to culture. We respond to like, that's how things are reacting. And I think it is interesting that the youngs, the Gen Zs and all are looking back to pre smartphone culture, pre social media. And how prevalent is this? I mean, it's just like they grew up watching reruns of the office. Right. But there's a lot of like, they're theorizing is that, this is a world they probably will never actually see. Just like having a simple office job that's like that. And there's a lot of like looking back towards retro stuff. I think culturally we may regress a little. It's like going back to the old video cars, but like you regress back to, okay, we gave too much of our lives to social media.

1:50:00We will just take a step back. Okay, so this is, I was thinking about this on the plane to CES as I was like sort of collating some of my thoughts about tech and AI and stuff. And I actually think I lay much more of the sin at the feet of the constant entertainment feed than I do at the feet of AI. I think that social media and the constant input of entertainment has numbed us and has reduced people's interest in making statements or engaging with societal ills. by orders of magnitude. And so I actually, to me, I'm sort of like, yeah, AI is whatever bullshit it is. But I actually think that the core of the social ills is the constant drip feed of entertainment that just turns your brain, that just dulls you.

1:50:56And a lot of people are trying to take a step back from this information overload. And I think we will probably see more of that. I think we will see more of that. But so my thesis winds up being that I think the breaking point for people for people living in this inflationary environment, I think that breaking point will be a lot higher than it would be without social media. I think the breaking point will take a lot longer than it would be without... It feels bad, but you can just pick something up and scroll through things that make your brain go, bing, bing, bing, bing. So I agree. My thing is, is they forced AI into every social networking app too.

1:51:36AI is everywhere it's in your ear I realize I'm doing my same bit that I always do but it's like when that disappears gets weird it kind of becomes obvious it was bullshit that will filter into the feature you're kind of already seeing it you're seeing people you're seeing random people being anti-AI now people I people I never talked about it but two separate things yeah keep but it creates the kind of chaos that makes people be like wait why do I need a new fucking laptop why don't I just go on eBay and buy an HP Omen from four years ago why don't I just buy an iPhone 16 Or enjoy what you have.

1:52:07Or like what you have is fine. Like this iPad is over a year old and I will probably use it for another three years or more. I don't know what they could possibly do. The iPad Pro, by the way, a stunning example of a product Apple spent years being like, why does this exist? A super powerful iPad. Who will spend the money of a laptop to just get an iPad? And they spent so long figuring out not what to do. Like they had no idea what to do with anything. That's endemic of another issue, like them trying to push into bigger categories and more expensive products. But it's all kind of part of the same thing.

1:52:42You've got to push more. You need more. The information overload, we didn't evolve to process as much information. So I think that has had a cultural impact on our brains. COVID has rewired people completely. You would think it would push us to be more, you know, more socially supportive, like try to come together. and it just broke our brains in other ways. So it's just like, I don't know. But I think that the reason it broke people's brains was facilitated by the entertainment feed. And I want to differentiate that from a social media platform where you can go and talk to your friends and family.

1:53:21Truly to me, it is the constant. They all kind of ended up becoming entertainment feeds. But it's why I'm specifically different, why I am using the words entertainment feed because I think that - How would you define that? A constant flow of entertainment that is instantly and always accessible. And this is this video or this text involved in this or is this only video? I think video is so much more poisonous than text. But I will say, I think text is, I think text does a very similar thing. No, but video is much easier to cycle through and consume a bunch of information fast. It's not even just the cycle through.

1:54:02it's that like I opened Instagram I opened Instagram this morning to do a work thing to like find a specific producer and look at who she follows and be like do I know anybody who she it's a networking, it's a useful tool and I opened it and it's some two hours later truly, truly, truly and it's because like I see in the little carousel I see this little 15 second like a girl being like here's what my boyfriend expected on New Year's and then here's what he actually got and it's like a very funny video going around and like looking at my brain my brain is like i see i see thing move and that makes me like i like things i'm so fucking glad i'm autistic i'm so fucking glad i see that i'm like i got something else to do i'm doing i'm doing work i just it's so cool i don't i see that i'm like yeah trying to fuck with this happened to me like i'm a pig but i'm not that kind of hog yeah yeah yeah last night i was like i had hours free For once, I could watch a movie.

1:55:00I could do all this stuff. Sat down, started looking at TikTok. I was like, you know what? This is comfy. This is nice. And also because my brain has been at like 200 % the entire week. So it just needs to like cool down. But it is such a great – But you cool it down with the like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, rather than I'm going to put on a movie and cool down in front of the movie, which is one bigger – Yeah. And I think the pressure is just increasing on people and will eventually pop. and I think the pressure is increasing from all sides. I just think it's going to take a lot longer now than it would have with the technology we had 20 years ago.

1:55:36I will say that. The problem is the, first of all, the real world was never meant to connect with finance this much. Most people were never meant to know what HB RAM was. No one was meant to know what a GPU was. Seven years ago, if you told, you asked someone what a GPU was, they would call the police. Like they'd be like, why are you saying strange words? to me you're a witch and no offense to witches but uh it's just now everyone's kind of aware of this and it's in their head and every boss and company is saying hey you must do a i know you will you are stupid you're a pig and a moron there's a great video of a comedian i don't remember it's just try banana now and it's just like that's all i think of with this stuff it's just harassing people i think you're right in the it's going to take a little longer because people are so addicted to feeds and the feeds are so intense.

1:56:26It just numbs them. But I think that there is a degree of harassment from the AI staff that means that when this starts to burst, it's going to be like fucking Coruscant and Return of the Jedi. I think people are going to be fucking excited to see this burn. I think people are just so fucking angry and the fucking price of all the electronics going up at a time when we're most, the angriest we've ever been at the computer. I'm not saying, I don't know the order of events. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think this is, I know this is kind of - The thing is, there's so much happening in the world right now.

1:56:56There's also the literal destruction of democracy right in front of us, right? There is – we're being led by warmongers and also the economy is collapsing. All this stuff is happening. I tend to look at like what will be the broad societal ways like we move through this. And the only way is like we do have to like step away from the tech a little bit. It's also like – I don't know, doing those social things that we didn't used to do. like we kind of stepped away from. So I love libraries. Hell yeah. Libraries are great. Libraries fucking great. We let a lot of people really shit on libraries and also strip away their resources and stuff.

1:57:35It is things like that where you see the rest of your community, you can help each other, you learn together. That's the sort of thing I want to support moving forward. And we need that. I will also say, like, I said this yesterday on the episode, it's like, I am a rare thing of like, the internet has allowed me to become a person rather than maybe less of one. That's like, I was a socially anxious kid and technology and the internet did help me. So yeah. And the thing is, you just, I think there's just a level of intentionality where it's like, the feeds don't work on me. I get deep anxiety when I have an infinite scroll.

1:58:08Like I have the, it has the opposite effect on me. I'm like, why won't this end? I can't watch anything, everything. I don't want to look at it because it's worrying me. This is bothering, which is literally everyone else's different. It's so strange. But it's like, these tools also let me talk to everyone in this room in an instant. They let me put on an insane podcast for 20 hours in a week, and nobody stops me. But there are actual beautiful things that technology can do. And what's great is, you could use the same technology from five fucking years ago. I'm not even saying put your phone down and burn it.

1:58:40I'm saying use what you got now or use what just happened. Computers, putting aside all the growth capitalism stuff, computers are fucking great right now. Computers are great. People are going back to personal music players. Just like a thing that plays music. You know what? That is beautiful. And the kids right now, the thing people are saying is like, they don't know if they're trusting an image. That's AI. That's an inherent distrust in AI and calling it out as a cultural object. I think that's fascinating too. So we are seeing the signs that there is going to be some sort of like pushback.

1:59:09I don't want there to be like the Battlestar Galactica thing, right? Or the Dune. The Buklaer and Jihad. Jihad. Jihad. Ed, you've been talking about - This is how you get about Jihad. Jihad. We're gonna get just the guy who just - A lot of revolts up Jihad out, you know? No, it's like - We don't have to go all the way. It's the tweet where the guy's like, what's the highest number? But a lot of 1 million. It's, but at the same time, my pushback, not, sorry. This is not a pushback. I'm agreeing with everything, but it's the way through this is to just be a little bit more fucking intentional with it.

1:59:41I know it's, don't look at this. You're gonna look at it. don't hate yourself but be aware that something's being done to you with it and also remember you can call any of your friends using these things you can talk to any of your friends if you're feeling lonely and sad use signal or i message they brought the landline back one of the most interesting products of like that was in the holiday season i think it's more like uppity rich parents are doing this but they're like there's a startup that made handset and you can program like your friends to it so your kids friends it's a handset they pick it up they They dial their friends.

2:00:14Is there a cord? I think there is a cord. I think there may be a cord. It's basically you don't have to have people's phone numbers memorized. Yeah. It's more like these are your trusted contacts. That's all this thing can call. It's back to the days where we were just like. Is it plugged into your wall or is it a cell phone that just has a cord on it? Because we can be quite cynical about CES. And my God, have we got another two hours today and four hours tomorrow and one hour on Saturday. So we will be. But there's also a degree of like as much as we complain, I've got to hang out with my friends.

2:00:43always. That's the human connection. I got to do it and I got to record using a weird Rodecaster Pro 2. Look at this thing! It's amazing! And we can record the audio. I have one from Matt Ossowski producer. Can I make a beat on that? It looks like I can make a beat on that. You have a soundboard as well. You can do all sorts of noises. But it's like you can do really cool shit with a computer now and you can talk to your friends with it. But the reason that things are shit is the people that are making the interfaces, the social interfaces are getting in the way. understanding that and starting from that position is what makes things better for you they're not going to make it better for you they're fucking assholes mark zuckerberg is overseeing a fraudulent operation 10 of their revenue in 2024 for meta was from scams and fraud that is a fucking reported thing from jeff horwitz of reuters like that should tell you everything it does not mean that the computer is inherently bad what they've done to the computer is bad and what we can do with the computer is the solution in the you can pull together a bunch of people just using text and email.

2:01:44I fucking just did it this week. There are great things. You can do it. Text, text, text, go meet in real life. You can take fucking photos on your phone. Awesome. There are still good things to be done. I know this is so hokey, but I think it's - It's a good point. It's not about being completely anti-tech. It's about intentional tech. Being anti-tech industry at the moment. Because it's like, we like Pebble because Pebble's like, what if a device had a use case? And everyone's like, fuck this shit. what do you mean you won't grow by 22 % year over year every quarter you piece of except he's private doesn't matter and it's just buy used at the moment that's my big that's actually my better off line 2026 buy used buy refurb buy used don't give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until they can prove that they can earn it because that is the real problem they want to grow forever you want to grow forever make useful shit but the actual internals of the computer I also will address something that people email me occasionally which is oh oh, the computer industry used to be good.

2:02:42Whatever. I don't know if it used to be good, but it used to be better. But there were beautiful things from the computer. Yeah. Part of how we got here is that we didn't ask cultural questions, right? We didn't push back against certain elements. Like I was there when social media was just starting out. And it was like, oh yeah, look at this feed of information. It was so cool. It was cool, but it was also, we knew Mark Zuckerberg was a piece of shit from the beginning. But did we? Most people did not. Most people did not, but there were enough stories about, oh, look at this kid who dropped out of Harvard and like did this thing.

2:03:10But there were stories about what he did before, how like the shitty sexist like proto-social network he made, who he was, like those stories were out there. And I watched this kid who didn't finish college but also had no real awareness of the world be propped up by VCs and the entire industry as some sort of like boy king. And what he did was create a thing that just generated money, right? And that the entire point of Facebook, 2000, you know, late 2000s to 2010s was just as much engagement as possible. It was just that, farming, and then everybody copied that, and that broke us because they didn't want to create something good.

2:03:46They just wanted to create something that addicted us. So it's like cigarettes. It's that and the scourge of neoliberalism and the idea that everything, the market is dominant. The market would never incentivize something bad. Again, everyone talks about - Lack of regulations in the 2010s, that didn't help. You talk about killing baby Hitler, that's great. I think baby Milton Friedman and baby Ronald. Reagan, put them on the top of the pile. Don't get me started. We've got all sorts of babies. There's a lot of babies. There's a lot of babies. There's a lot of babies. No, but the thing is, it's like, the incentives are the problem.

2:04:18And the only thing we can do as consumers is, don't stop using tech. I think that that's an unrealistic thing. Like, Chloe, it's your life. Like, you have to use tech, especially as a stand-up. You're kind of a slave. I have to use social media. Yeah, you have to. There's just no other way around it. Don't buy a new phone. I'm done buying new fucking shit. I'm going on. There are lines. You haven't seen how broken my phone is. No, but go and buy a... Chloe, Chloe, go and buy a refurb. I just looked at how broken my phone is. Refurb iPhones. I actually think I am done buying new phones. I'm going to buy the refurb forever.

2:04:54I buy my parents' refurb iPhones every couple of years from Amazon. Perfect for that. It works great. The hardware lasts, and then they're still fairly up to date. No new shit unless it's cool. unless it's fucking new and cool and good. Fuck CES. It's like, but really though, if you can buy new, buy used, go on eBay, go on whatever, go on Craigslist, like go and buy from a regular person, circulate that money in the real world, take it out of the fucking stock market. Cash, cash. Okay, I'm going a little insane, but it's like, I stand by it because it's like all of the new prices are going to go up.

2:05:32Yeah. And when it comes to social media, I think we can be more intentional, right? It's like for the longest time, people are making arguments like, okay, I'm going to stay on X, even though Elon Musk bought it and destroyed Twitter. I'm going to stay on this day. Now it's a freaking CSAM generating garbage machine. It's like, I think we can start to make those moral choices where it's like, career-wise, I would be better off staying on X probably, but you have to have some sort of like moral center. And I think we need to ask more of that as ourselves right now. So get off of X. You don't need to be on social media.

2:06:01I want to stay on there for my fucking publisher. And I might talk to them about it. It's just like, it's a horrifying pedo generator. You don't want to be there. And they're literally, nobody's doing anything about the pornography and the CSAM being generated on it. And that just exists. And they just got a bunch of new funding. They got rewarded for this too. Well, they did that so they could buy GPUs. Now, actually, I want to end with a fun idea. Here's a fun idea that I think everyone's going to love. So here is how Elon Musk ruins his life using AI. So Elon Musk is doing, they just raised$20 billion.

2:06:31Most of that is going to go to GPUs for AI for Grok. And where did they raise that from? VCs? VCs. Oh, fuck. I forget like who exactly were the venture capitalists. But is it mostly VCs? It's mostly VCs in debt and NVIDIA. So they're doing that to build more data centers. They're losing over a billion dollars a month, just on the current thing. They're going to build more data centers, which will lose them even more money. Elon Musk's money mostly comes from leverage, which means just borrowing on his current holdings. He's not particularly liquid. And he's added the most money losing thingy ever to a social network which already loses money and r slash grok on Reddit, everyone there should be redacted.

2:07:10It's mostly just people generating horrifying things of woman. Here's the thing. Every time he does that, it's probably five to ten bucks and it's happening millions of times a day. This could actually lead, AI could lead to the destruction of someone like that. And people say, oh, Elon Musk always finds more money. There are actual limits to Ed's point. There are actual limits to things. I would say for normal people, yes. He is the world's richest man. He's finding ways to do it because he's the richest man on paper. And he got so much. Like the Twitter deal is$13 billion. That's fucking nothing compared to the bullshit data centers.

2:07:45I want everyone to just think about and laugh about the idea that this man is building big ass data centers. I'm just saying he keeps talking about Mars. Let him go to Mars. Let him go to Mars. Let him be hoisted by his own rocket. Yeah, if you've read the beginning of Red Mars, you know, there's some ideas there. Yeah, some great ideas. In that first prologue about what might happen to Elon Musk. I love Kim Stalem. He's so good. Yeah, and I realize that it's tough. And I know as we come to the end of this block, I know we've been quite cynical. This is so hokey. And I do this every CES. The best thing you can do when you hear this stuff, when you're like, I'm upset with this is love your friends harder.

2:08:26Tell them you love everyone in this room. I'm genuinely so happy to have everyone here. But it's like that little thing that you think is so immaterial will save lives, will make people's lives happier. Tell people you love their shit. Go online, use social media to say, I think, Chloe, you're insanely funny and I've watched you only get funnier. DaVindra, I've followed your work for like a decade. Edward Ongraso Jr., an insanely talented man. And I love reading your work and I love having you on the mic. These things are actually very easy to do and easier because of digital. There is never, you're listening to this, go and fucking do that to literally anyone you know.

2:08:57family member friend creator tell them you love them love their shit and why that is actually something that digital communication allows you to do today that will make the world better buy used buy used now if you want a new thing buy a used one it's probably fine that is the only way we begin fixing things and these moral choices like davindra mentioned what if i want to chat gpt wrapper to tell me what color my shit is and if that is gonna be indicative of a health problem You could just use Microsoft Copilot, which will be in a Windows laptop from a year ago. Microsoft 365 Copilot app. And you have to turn the laptop around and point it at your poop in the toilet and then take a photo with the laptop.

2:09:34And then also at the same time, look at the chat box and be like, is this working? You got this. We're going to see some cool stuff. Like these local LLMs, we're going to go back to punk tech, right? People building their own cool little models, their own little cool things. Like we're going to be back there. Their own little gadgets powered by punk tech. I want to see that more. And the thing is, I know it's fucking grim out there and it really is. We are still, one of the problems in society is we're hyper-connected and full of technology. One of the cool things is we are as well. And there is a ton of tech that exists today that you don't need to worry about the future that will do what you want to do by used.

2:10:12And also tell your friends and family you love them. Tell creators you love their work. Share their shit. Yeah, give me little compliments. Give, give, give. No, I'm actually deadly serious though. Give friends little compliments that you can do that in seconds now. It doesn't matter where they are in the world as long as they've got an internet connection. It's so fucking hokey, but I think it's easy to miss. And I think, like, as we come to an end, as we come to the end here, as we come to the end of this blog, it's worth saying that. And you know what? I'll let everyone plug something. Devendra, what are you working on at the moment?

2:10:39What do you want people to read? And Gadgets, where I'm doing this stuff, check out our CS coverage. I also do a movie podcast, thefilmcast at thefilmcast.com. Can't wait to see your movie, Chloe. But maybe don't listen to my review. I don't know. I don't know. So Edwin Grayser Jr., what are you excited about writing? What are you writing at the moment?

2:10:58Working on this very weird essay for Print Magazine. Tell me. It's too weird. I mean, yeah. I've pitched the same idea. You're not supposed to do this. I've pitched the same idea to two places, but I know one is going to actually say yes and the other won't. And it's one of my favorite speeches is MLK's Letter to Christians. it's from the perspective of Paul writing to American Christians and warning and kind of like sussing up the society they have and warning about it but I wanted to invert it so I wrote like a letter from a future where fascists won and it's a letter from the fascists who won to the fascists now as a way to reverse talk about stuff that's going on now fuck yeah that sounds amazing that sounds awesome I don't like researching it but it's been interesting.

2:11:51It's a fun experiment. Yeah. So stuff like that. I've been trying to do a lot more fiction experiments because I've been doing more readings lately. So good. Excited for that. Fucking great. Chloe, where are you playing? Where are you doing? I'm doing Cincinnati this weekend, the 9th and 10th or 10th and 11th, whatever the Friday, Saturday is. Link will be in there. Then Washington DC, the next weekend, MLK weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then that following week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, not a weekend I'm doing my solo show cheat in Philadelphia come on out to that Vermont, Fort Collins yada yada yada Fargo and I have been putting a link to getting a permanent discount to my newsletter in these things I've not done my paid newsletter it's a chunk of my income please fucking god subscribe to my paid newsletter I really if I can in a year's time if I can double from here I can just do this because it makes me really happy also subscribe to mine And we'll figure out a special.

2:12:49We can do an Ed Ed. Two Eds are better than one discount. Yeah. Ed squared. But really, though, if you're going to put your money into anything, Sean Paul Adams, who is a friend of the show, a friend of the suite, he passed sadly last year. His son is epileptic. So we are honoring him by getting you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. His family and friends would deeply appreciate you doing so, and so would I. Thank you so much. We'll be back for two hours in a few hours. This has been incredible. I love doing this show. I love you all.

2:13:24Thank 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. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. 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.

2:14:29A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection and healthier ways to show up in your life Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroach on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Ed Helms. And I'm Cal Penn and we are the hosts of Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

2:15:10This week on the podcast I am talking to film and TV critic, radio and podcast host and Harry Potter superfan Rihanna Dillon to discuss Audible's full cast adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. What moments in this audio book capture the feeling of the magical world best for you or or just stood out the most? I always loved reading about the Quidditch matches, and I think the audio really gets it because it just plunges you right into the stands. You have the crowd sounds like all around you is surround sound, especially if you're listening in headphones. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:16:02Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm and even just reading the comments. That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart-Gloster on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Every season is a chance to grow. And the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and each week we dive into real conversations that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:16:42The social media trend is landing some Gen Zers in jail. The progressive media darling whose public meltdown got her fired. and the massive TikTok boycott against Target that actually makes no sense. You won't hear about these online stories in the mainstream media, but you can keep up with them and all the other entertaining and outrageous things happening online, in media, and in politics with the Bread vs. Everyone podcast. Listen to the Bread vs. Everyone podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.