Radio Better Offline: Cherlynn Low, Alex Cranz & Victoria Song

26:06Super honest. I was like, oh, thank you. That's so nice. And they're like, you advocate for your colleagues. Oh, that's so, it's true. I am a new universe. But what use is this information? My self-esteem, it's six feet under. I need an AI with transcripts to have definitive objective proof that I'm a good person. How nuanced are these going to be? You don't like when a computer says you're pretty? I don't. I don't love it. I don't care. I love it. The computer was like, you are such a good writer. And I was like, thank you so much. We're getting into Severance Zone, aren't we? Yeah. Oh, you should have seen the to-dos it gave after I watched an episode of Severance.

26:42It made no sense. Watch a more interesting episode. I watched four. Okay, no. I've loved this season, but the one where she goes out to the cold. I've watched four episodes. That was not the episode that I watched. No, I've loved this season. The episode that I was getting to do's from was from the one where it's Gemma It was all about Gemma? That was a beautiful one. That was a beautiful episode, but when I looked at the to do's I was like, this is This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Go to the dentist, donate blood. Not like that. It was just kind of closer to the discoverer. Follow up on thoughts that were shared that were not.

27:27And I was like, ah. This is now a movie pod. Honestly, I have some other practical questions. So it's$50 with no subscription, yes? Yes. How the fuck does this make sense numerically? So they claimed in the review, you said they're going to do it on device, which is a thing that everyone says, and I've never seen one of these companies actually execute. So$50, and they're... I'm pulling up my fact number. She's showing Victoria Valley, who is honest in, and does not like dishonest behavior. I agree with that from what I know of Victoria. It says that's one of your hobbies. I know. Hell yeah. Wait a minute.

28:02Oh, look at this. Your hobbies are being a good person. Wait, hang on. Hang on. Show me. It says, Victoria believes in leading with love and kindness and calmness in interactions with family. And it's tagged at the bottom as hobbies. As hobbies. That's so good. But yeah, Victoria understands Korean to some extent. I don't have to. Jesus Christ. Victoria has a partner named Gabe. Very correct. That's also correct. Also a hobby. Also a hobby. This is labeled as health. Victoria has lost both of her parents. Jesus. Yes, this is true. Victoria values family relationships and wishes to maintain them.

28:40Also true. I would love it if it said otherwise. It's like Victoria is - This is politics, which is also true. Victoria has been involved in discussions about family inheritance and estates. Tagged as politics. That is true. Very good. Victoria has an interest in visiting family in Korea. True. Hobbies. Victoria has collaborated on a gadget-related podcast. Wow. This is true. Wait, so it's very gamified almost. It's also very obvious. Yeah. I have to wonder. See, the problem is I would love this company to burn. I think the idea of this concept is horrifying. I think it's upsetting that it exists.

29:19However, I would also love to see like a 10 people's worth of data on this just to see if they tell everyone very similar things. Because how the fuck do you define? Like, is it willing to be like, you sound like a dickhead. You do not care about your family. I was going to say, I think the flip side of it validating you is will it pick up on behaviors that are negative in people that have like these traits? Like we, you know, in social media and in popular culture now, we're calling everyone narcissists, right? If you watch any episode of Love is Blind, it's like, that's a narcissist and that's a manipulator.

29:47It had opinions based on Love is Blind as well. One of my fact-tenders in the review is saying that Victoria had an incident where Madison left the room. She did leave the room, but not with me. We will talk about LIB after this.

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33:13I'm curious to see what it would do to any number of CEOs or billionaires that might be told other things. It has also listened to me bitch to friends about things and has recorded those things. Those were not included in the review because I would get canceled. It did also listen to me talk for about an hour and a half about Blake Lively. and Justin Baldoni. Okay. My opinions on that. Your friends, I assume, it thought. Yeah, actually, it said Victoria's team balcony. Victoria's team balcony in a celebrity gossip context. And I was like, it also gave me facts such as Victoria has a living room and a kitchen.

33:58Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm glad you have both of those. Yeah. One of my favorite things that it did was it summarized a conversation between, I mean, so what happened was that we were having some late night cookies, Oreos, and I dropped one into the cat's empty food bowl. And I went, three second rule. And my husband goes, that's disgusting. And I say, in an apocalypse situation, you would eat that Oreo. And he went, I have a heat gun. I would just disinfect it. It took this conversation and went, Victoria and Gabe have disagreements about how to handle smelly things in an apocalypse.

34:37That was a disagreement. Good job. It was a disagreement. I'm just like, what the fuck? It feels like. What is the point of any of it? Who is looking at this and going like, ah, finally. I'd forgotten I had the smelly Oreo. No, actually, the Oreo was left out. How would you possibly not? It feels like the bee was this little toddler robot in your house looking at you going through your life and then taking notes, right? Yeah. And we don't know what the notes are for, but it's taking notes, right? It's taking notes. It just sounds like... It gives you an update on your day. It sounds like every guy, a 25-year-old woman has dated in New York who's just on his phone just going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:10He said something about smelly Oreo or some shit. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. I will say... Yeah, I think you had an argument. Every once in a while, you do get a really good to-do, though. Like, it was like follow up with your video team about making a social for the Volte. That was something I actually did. Call the plumber, which I did. Fix the HOA violation that you left festering for eight months. How dare you? Which I did. Different times. So, you know, like some of them are good. And how frequently are they good? Like one out of every. I would say it depends on what you use it for. So if you're using it primarily for work conversations, which is appropriate.

35:47So you mute it when it's not. When you mute it and you only use it for work conversations, your batting average is quite high for takeaways that are good. Like 90 %? No, like 60. Oh, 90. 90, Sherlyn. I'm not saying 60 is pretty good. This is the worst it'll ever be. And it depends on how many people are in the conversation with you. So it listened to a staff meeting, and the takeaways were not so particularly good for me, but they would have been great for someone in the particular thing. but then you know if you're talking with friends it's difficult because you're talking with friends you have to go like hey so just so you know I have this thing on me and it's listening and it's going to have some AI insights and some of your friends, some of my friends are techies so they're like oh man what LLM does it use so they don't mind my bestie is just like another one of your fucking devices sure go ahead whatever one of your doodads go off My husband, however, was very much like, it is not useful enough to invade my privacy.

36:52That's a great review. It's the people around you. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask is like, is$50 worth? Like$50 to invade your privacy forever to give all of your, not just like your bowel movements. Yeah. Everything to a company you don't know worth it. I mean, they, okay, I have to come on here and say I did ask about the privacy. It's not like I didn't ask about privacy. Yeah, Brian's going to ask that too. They are working on a local phone-only model. Yeah, yeah, working on that. No, working on that. I'm just saying. No, no, no. I'm not criticizing you. I know. I'm just saying. The other thing is that everything is encrypted in transit and at rest.

37:33Good. They have a third-party auditing their privacy protocols every so often. And then no audio is stored. Okay. It's just processed and then you get transcripts, which, you know, sometimes I was like, I would actually like audio proof that my cousin made me cry so that I could shove it in their face in the future. But it's still doing a transcript. So it's still the transcript is not always correct. It's not always correct. What's crazy is this company raised seven million dollars a year ago. I can't believe it. And it took them this long to come up with a product that kind of works. That money could be like saving so many lives.

38:10I'm sorry. I'm so angry. Burn it. You feel warm at least. I will say I think$7 million they produced hardware yes that's a thing they did for$7 million I mean that's almost impressive but that's kind of the review of AI though yeah but no I think this seems the most no disrespect a pointless deeply flawed product only two steps above the rabbit this feels like some shit I hear about calling it above the rabbit is very interesting This is like a 2015-arse product. This is some Indiegogo fraud. Yes, exactly. I gave it a five because it worked better than Humane at what it said it was going to do.

38:52Okay, that's fair. It's also 50 bucks. Yeah, it's also 50 bucks. Well, it's also because, yeah, that. And also Humane made way greater claims and promises. Rabbit also made very great claims. I want to point out that, like, I find it funny that, like, there's a lot of concerns of invasions of privacy. And I get that for people around me, there is an invasion of privacy. I was intrigued by the$50 because like Victoria sometimes I do want like the audio recording of things happening in my life as receipts like I said there's a glimmer of a good idea hold on what do you have in your pocket what are two on the right here in front of us I have nothing but good luck and stars in my eyes yeah we all have phones the extra step yeah something that's always recording Alex you don't think like maybe myself and Victoria I'll speak for myself do which is that I feel as if everywhere I go every day I am more at risk of needing to back up my experience, to defend myself.

39:45And that's why that sort of device always felt appealing to me. So I think in an enterprise sense, it does make sense. If you're a lecturer, if you're a lawyer, and you need someone to take notes. No lawyer in their right mind. Okay, not a lawyer in their right mind. A lawyer in their wrong mind. But just someone who takes a lot of meetings and needs a lot of notes from those meetings. Like there is like a use case there. But the problem is with those. I understand what you're getting at is like doctors and lawyers. Here's the thing. They need – HIPAA. They need – well, HIPAA. It needs to work.

40:22They need accuracy. If you get a nuanced thing wrong in the law, that tends to be what lawyers love. That's the problem. So that's why I'm saying there's like a glimmer of an idea there. Like I think there's the glimmer of the idea. That's regenerative AI writ large. That is. It's just fucking – there's a glimmer of an idea. It's the suggestion of a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's the concepts of a plan. It's just like if you spend a month constantly reviewing your own life and fact-checking what happens. How did that leave you feeling not well? I felt insane a little bit because I was constantly fact-checking.

40:57I actually thought it was reading my text messages for a while. Because I was like, these are private conversations I had in text messages on encrypted platforms. How is it even knowing these to generate them? Were you just typing out loud? No, no, I don't. Were you taking voice dictation? This did really affect my behavior over a month because I realized that like an offhand comment, it can just glean so much from that. That was just frightening to me because I would say like a thing in passing to my husband and be like, oh, here's an update on that. And it would just, and I was like, oh, shit.

41:29And so I've actually been very quiet the last month. I don't speak anymore to myself. After the poop gate and bathroom crimes, I was like, I do not say things anything to me. Oh, my God. I meant to ask if in the encryption process whether the sounds of plops get encrypted too, but I guess, you know. I would love an audio file of that for myself. That's horrifying. I think that there is a larger thing here, though. This is a classic tech guy idea. It's like, what is an idea I'd have? oh, I want to memorize everything that's happening around me and be able to analyze it and then do these insights.

42:05It's actually a very cruel way to live because we say things offhanded. Forgetting is a very important part of life. But being fallible, our existence is not something that is written down in its entirety. And indeed, I don't know how useful it is having everything written down. It's not at all. A fun thing that I did. Unless you're like a researcher. Yeah. a hundred years from now is absolutely going to love to know how V responded to her bowel movement. Oh my God, they're going after it. The anthropologist 200 years from now, it's going to be like Ann Lister. They're just like, thank you for giving me all of this.

42:39They've listened to this and they're like, we need to dig up Victoria's bowel now. And that's the only reason. If you're an archivist, I'm so sorry. Listen, okay? No, I didn't beat it. Anyway. Anyway, I would just like to note that I am an avid diarist and a journaler. I would have gone with another way of saying it. I heard diarrhea. Fuck you guys. Anyway, I write in a diary daily. I journal daily. I also journal regularly. I journal regularly. This past month I have journaled every single day. The things that I write down and that I remember as memorable are not always the same thing that this thing picked up Because a lot of my thoughts and things that are important to me and memories that are meaningful to me are completely silent.

43:29So my philosophical question is if it doesn't happen out loud, if you have a society where we're all wearing these devices, if you say nothing out loud, does it count as your memory? Right. And this device would say no because it can't know that from you. It's also a very crude analysis of memory itself. Human memory is insane. Yeah, it is. The things we remember are done in chunks. The experience of being alive, at least for me, is it's not like my thoughts like, and now I'm on a podcast and now I'll say the thing. It's like, I did. There are apparently people who do. I actually do. Those people are.

44:04No. Wait, Sherlyn, you think like this? What's it like to be normal? What's it like to have an internal monologue? I have an internal monologue. I have one of those. I don't have an internal monologue. It's more adjacent to Cornholio for me. Cornholiolic? I actually, you mentioned something earlier though, Sherlyn, I want to go back to, which is you said this thing about feeling the need to document things around you can you go into like what is the the thing pushing you to do that it's having to witness it it's because i feel as if i maybe in part of my life i've talked to both of you about this before where i encounter things and then i feel as if i get questioned about them afterwards and people don't believe me right so like journalism brain it's journalism brain it's microaggressions being thrown your way daily being a lady it's being a woman it's like the things that we have to think about all the time So like I feel as if if I had a wearable microphone or camera on me all the time.

44:52This is why I reviewed the humane with great enthusiasm at first. It's I feel as if if one of those people who cat calls me across the street, I had like documented evidence of that. And I could bring it up like how many times it happens a week. I could have like valuable knowledge on my hands to be like when people question if I if it really happens that much. I can be like, look at all these instances. So for that reason, I have a lot of things that document parts of my life. To your point, Alex, I have phones that record a lot of my conversations when I feel they're important. There's my security camera outside.

45:24I'm like, whatever it captures promotion. I have it triggered on a motion sensor and it records everything. And I'm like, I don't pay now for the backup that allows me to go back in time and look at them all the day. But if I did, I would sit there and look all the time. I think that experience is not every woman or every person who feels that way. But I don't know. Something in my upbringing or my culture has led me to feel like that. There's a fine line because I do think that when you do that, when you are constantly reviewing the documents of your life, it can be not so great for your mental health.

45:58Oh, absolutely. It's super – my conclusion is that like part of being a human is understanding when you need to forget things and move on. And instead you're inviting – And I don't trust an AI to do that for me. A really poorly implemented, honestly, because of how badly it failed you. You're having a poorly implemented AI. Right. Intending to profit off you in ways we still don't know because$50 to have that many AI-like recalls is burning cash. So where are they making their money? I think there is plans down the line to have some sort of subscription. Yeah, of course. Right now there isn't one.

46:38That is the way of every single one of these products. We see this again and again and again. There's something that really moves Silicon Valley, and they get really, really excited. In this case, it's AI, and they're like, how can we commodify this? How can we make money off of this? How can I go and make money off of this? Shit, I think that all the time. I'm unemployed right now. I'm always thinking, how can I do that? I hire Alex Cran. She's great. I'm awesome. But it's this constant thing. And then they released this product that is pretty terrible. You gave it a five. It is clearly not finished.

47:06And it is for such a small group of the population. how on earth do they expect anyone in the normal world who's just out there existing, who goes to Walmart all the time and doesn't listen to podcasts all the time to be like, yeah, I want to take this little$50 thing that's going to charge me money monthly and wear this on my, and record everything I do. No normal person. No one would. No normal person. It is such, it is such brain worms. It's insane. To think that this is like. But you have that a lot in like Silicon Valley, right? They only think about the positive of it. And like one of the things is like They don't think about the negative.

47:39They're not thinking about the positive of it. Let's be really clear. They're not thinking about the positive of it. They're thinking about how can I make money off this? Yes, growth. How can I grow? It is a growth at all costs thing. Yes. And it's destructive. And it's ruining this world. But I mean, when they market it, they tell you all the good things it can do. But they never really get into the fact that this thing listened to me cry pretty heavily after I got into a fight. I'm sorry. And then I had to review the transcript and then look at it and then just have it analyze how I was feeling.

48:07because it was like the day was a sad one for Victoria. It's like when Amazon did tone. As someone who's recorded one of her own firings before, you don't want to listen to that stuff. Oh, I've recorded a breakup before. That was great. Oh my God. You don't want that. I did it for legal reasons. That's unhinged, girl. You know me. I am unhinged. Oh my God. I want to like... You're lucky I haven't recorded all our conversations, honey. No, no. Here's the thing. I will clarify that I record. I don't go and review every day. I think that that's really detrimental to your mental health. I do it for the receipts.

48:35And in that breakup example, I don't think I actually recorded it. I wrote down every single word I could remember after. And that's different, just to be clear. Yes, yes. I think that would be a huge invasion of press. I think what I'm really frustrated by is this is another example of a totally unfinished product. We're seeing this again and again and again. We saw it with Apple this last week. Apple Intelligence. When you've got Gruber and Gurman and a lot of these other people coming out there saying, hey, something's wrong with this. When you've got fucking Gruber being like, I don't like them.

49:04Exactly. you've lost Gruber that means you've failed and we're seeing that if Apple is out there rushing a product when they know it's not ready especially Apple of all the companies when they don't have all of the stuff they don't have the use cases it's like what we saw with VR I spent years covering VR waiting for that big moment and everybody said it's just around the corner no it's not always around the fucking corner is it here yet? no okay I just wanted to chat why didn't you ask me? is it because V isn't her name? it's because she does a lot of VR coverage it's Victoria reality thank you Victoria exactly I've seen her wear a lot of different glasses.

49:36A lot of smart glasses. It's just, and also the company that made this, by the way, the founding team came from Twitter. Oh, sorry. They helped ship Twitter spaces. You know, that beloved product. And some sort of video chat app called Squad. Okay. Squad, the anti-bro startup, is creating a safe space for teenage girls online. And wait a second. Let's see who founded this. Esther Crawford. I think she's the woman that helped Elon Musk. Anyway, point is, these fucking people don't care at all. They're not sitting there being like, how would this be helpful? Because the most helpful thing would make sure it was really focused.

50:17That it was able to discern a professional. But they probably can't do it because it isn't fucking possible. If people cared about people, people with money cared about other people, we would be spending this money on cancer research where the NIH grants are being pulled and stalled right now or they would focus it on improving the healthcare system of this country but people do not care. They care about taking their money and growing it for more money for themselves. That's just like... Which I hate. I don't expect people to suddenly become good people overnight especially if they have money.

50:48But there is just like one thing where it's like you have to at the very least create a good product experience for people and the thing that frustrates me the most when I review products is that I feel like there's just this Pollyannish view of what life is from these people in Silicon Valley. Where it's just like, I have had a life of great suffering. And they think it's like, yeah. You know, I've been through a lot of shit. Like both my parents died, my dog died, my entire immediate family died in the last five years. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. It's fine. It's not, but it's fine. I have like a lot of, you know, traumatic stuff that has happened and it's kind of changed my perspective of these kinds of devices because life is not pretty.

51:36There are moments where there are moments where it's very hard and where these sorts of to do's. I can imagine a time where like when I was in the height of my grief where I would have loved a thing to remind me to do stuff, to listen to the conversations that I was not processing to give me those to do's. Like there are moments and I think there is a desire for something like that. That AI could ostensibly at some point when it actually works, a lot of like asterisks here that could help people. And I think if people want to pursue that, that's great. But you can't do it without acknowledging the fact that not every moment in your life is going to be pleasant.

52:14They're going to be embarrassing. There's going to be heartbreak. There's going to be these negative experiences that you don't necessarily want summarized to you in a way that you're going to have to review and feel – did your ex gaslight you? Guess what? The AI is going to gaslight you about how that horrible douche gaslit you. And like that kind of thing is just not necessarily great. And you get it across so many different categories. Can I put on my business person hat? It's not just bad. She's putting it on. I know. She is literally. It's a bad hat. It's a big top hat. It's a little top hat.

52:51Let me get my monocle out. It's not just it's bad for people. It's a bad product. Yeah. Let's be clear. A lot of these products we've seen again and again and again trying to do AI, trying to make it. Google's done some decent work in this space with decent. But most of these products continue to be bad. They continue to be searching. I'm sorry. I've got to push back on that. Like what with Google? I'm sorry. notebook lm alone there was that thing where you could like you could like erase a person out of a picture oh magic eraser yeah that's not generative ai though yeah it is it's generating is that generative it's not in the era of so google's done that before the rise of what else did it do this is by the way this is also the industry that the entire economy is built on top of just to be clear and these are some of the most well-credentialed tech people and we're all just going, fuck, why is this?

53:48Hang on, pause, pause. I want to pivot to all of that by saying there is a good product that's built to help people feel better. You're pointing at me. For AI? No, not AI. That's the thing. No, I want to talk about this. There's so much about AI. It's like a Mexican standoff of pointing. You were pointing at each other so hard. We really were. They are, really. They're doing the Spider-Man. We were the Spider-Man. Yeah, but they're not similar. I don't know. Let's Sherlyn make a point. Anyway. Yeah. Wait, who's going? I was going to go. I have been using this app. I encountered it through a co-worker who wrote about it for us.

54:20It's called Finch. It's an app that's like a self-care app. The birdie. So by taking care of yourself, you're taking care of this pet, you're helping it grow. And what it is, is these the most gentle suggestions of to-dos in a day. Whether it is as simple as get out of bed, brush your teeth, drink water. You complete them. You get points. You grow your pet. Whatever. It is a gentle reminder of things you want to do throughout the day. and you can reward yourself. And it is developed by, and here's the crucial difference, two independent developers that were college buddies that were just trying to help motivate each other.

54:53And I think that is an example I can point to of tech being able to help people because I also read the subreddit. I mean, that is a great example and a lot of different things there. It's two people. It's not seeking a huge valuation. It's not for capitalism. And it doesn't sound like it's using a lot of generative AI. No, it's not AI-based. It has a point. It is a very focused product with a core mission in mind of helping people. And that is something I can stand by. Yeah. But I think most of these products we're seeing is particularly in the AI market. Especially from the big companies and the VCs.

55:26Everybody is out just doing this money grab. Everybody is just saying, how do I grab this space? Because the motivation is different. Well, it's because the investors are asking. Exactly. Of course they're asking that. And what are they all doing? Why are they all doing this? They're all trying to chase the iPhone. They're all trying to chase something that happened in 2007. Sure. And let's point out, in 2007, the iPhone was a way more, even in its shittiest state, 2007, was a way more well-thought-out, well-produced product than any of the products we're seeing right now. And it also fixed really big.

55:55I got the original iPhone. I was a little nerd. I didn't have friends, but I did have money saved up from writing. And I bought it. And I remember showing people visual voicemail and people going, holy shit, that's amazing. Because voicemail at the time was this defunct product where you had to dial in and hit a button. I do miss recording my voicemail message, though. I do not. I do. It's cute as hell. People can barely understand me half the fucking time. So, unless I'm on this show, I hope. But, like, you could send text messages and it didn't involve you doing, like, the weird hitting the numbers thing.

56:24The T9. It was very obvious. I love the T9. Sorry. Okay. It's just intention, right? Yeah. The intentionality. But also real people problems experienced by humans. Exactly. Exactly. Right now, all we are doing is we are creating things and everybody's sitting around saying, wow, I wish that, you know, a universal problem. Everybody wants to chronicle every moment of their life. Sherlyn does. I sure do. You actually don't. Yeah, Sherlyn actually. You actually don't. You want to chronicle important moments at some point. You don't want to chronicle every moment. No. And also, no offense, Sherlyn is one person.

57:01Yeah, I am the most important, but I am one person. You are one person. You are like, that is a very small group of people. and they're like, everybody wants to do this. I think there is a much higher level problem though, which is they are not being like, well, you know what people have problems with? Remembering things. They're like, yeah, we can't fucking fix that. We actually can't fix that. Like we can't fix that. Or people have problems with communication. Yeah, well, we really also can't fix that. What can we do? Record everything and hope something fucking comes out? I don't know. These worms with their money, give it to me.

57:31I feel like they took the nugget of a good idea, which is what you have been saying, the glimmer of a good idea and then stuffed, they needed money to make the good idea work and the only way to get that money is to say AI is the way. I agree. I think there's also another step, which is they actually can't do the good idea. I don't think they're capable of doing it because the good idea would be like, hey, listen to what's going on and just tell me what things you think I might forget. It can't do that because the only thing they can do is have a big sludge of information, chuck it at a large language model and hope something comes out other than like, I don't want to watch the Garbo movie, which is a quote from your article.

58:03Yes, the Garbo movie was It Ends With Us from my very 90-minute long slant of how I don't want to watch that. My cat Babu, I talk to him like a person. It's going to be like, you told Babu. I also talk to my cat as a person, and it said that I had a rough-and-tumble ride with them discussing childhood memories because it mentioned my cat, Petey. Right. And I'm like, Petey's my cat. And I was talking to the cat, and I say, oh, who's a little baby? Wait, did you understand that? No, it just said that I have a dog named Edie. Oh, great. Nailed it. Yeah. No, it would be like saying to Ed, Ed is talked to Hal, who he calls Mr.

58:42Beautiful and Mr. Fluffy. Yeah. And he really is. He acts like the most beautiful cat in the world that he is. I would imagine your fact Tinder would say Ed knows someone named Mr. Beautiful and he is Fluffy or something like that. Mr. Perfect, Mr. Beautiful and so on. It's just, and I think that's what it really is. We all are coming up with distinct problems that can be solved, and this is not what large language models do, and it's very difficult to get them to do specific things, as proven by the fact that none of the products exist. You can't solve being human. Yes. That's the thing, is we're all human.

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1:01:12Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. I said this in a previous episode with you at the CS episode where I don't even think robotics need to be humanoid in nature. Yes. It's not an efficient form of body. Exactly. Or of repetitive movement. That's it. And also, they're not even making the – like, so much of this, what frustrates me, Even with the Kevin Roos thing, it's like no real problem solved. What could a conscious, an AGI could theoretically listen without recording and go, okay, I think you might need a reminder on this because I know you. These motherfuckers, actually, that is the ultimate problem with this.

1:01:45It doesn't know you at all. It actually doesn't know you. That actually reminds me of when I was testing the Meta Ray-Ban Live AI. What? She's pulling a hair off. Sorry. It just bugged me. But I was testing that. And so it's Live AI. It's multimodal. It can look at what you're looking at and you can ask it questions and it'll see what you're seeing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are actual use cases for that. I've had many, many blind and low vision people reach out to me saying that that could change their lives. Which is cool. That is good. I love that. But, you know, the demos that they were, like, suggesting that I try or whatnot, I looked at my room.

1:02:23I was like, tell me how I could make this room look less sad, basically. And I was like, oh, you could put art up. You could have a plant. you could have some rugs and I was like Jesus fucking Christ what art you could text any random white guy and they'd be like I don't fucking know what art should I use I had to ask five or six different questions just digging and digging and digging for this AI to suggest an artist I asked my best friend she said you would love XYZ I loved XYZ I bought it immediately it's not even contextually intelligent it doesn't have It doesn't look around and go, okay, looking at the format of this room.

1:03:04It's just frustrating because it's the info slot. It is just collecting data and going. See, I actually – I was telling Sherlyn about this earlier. I had a great moment where somebody was like, oh, yeah, I use Claude AI as a therapist. And I was like, you're unhinged. I love you. It is wrong. And so I was like, I'm going to talk to Claude AI. And I was talking to it and I was telling her about how things were going and everything. And I was like, I would really like it if you would recommend a book to me that kind of speaks to the experience. I'm having right now. And immediately it was like, Goldfinch.

1:03:34And I was like, Goldfinch? I'm not familiar with this. I've read that book. Why that book? What is this book about? Okay, so this book is a Bildungsroman from Donna Tartt, author of Secret History. It's about this little boy named Theo whose mom dies in a terrorist attack at the Met and he steals a piece of art. Just like me. It goes through his life of just being like, well, I have money. Alex, the resemblance is uncanny. The uncanny. It's so uncanny. And I'm obsessed with a manic pixie dream girl in the thing. And then I do a bunch of crime. And at the end of the book, he's just like, well, I've made life decisions.

1:04:12Average better offline listener. No, anyway. But it was like, I looked at that and I was like, well, this is a terrible fucking suggestion. And so I said, okay, suggest a movie to me. And it goes, Silver Linings Playbook. What? Kids. And honestly, it was the best moment in my entire experience with this thing. Because before that, I'd been like, wow, this starts to get me. And I started to almost believe the AI understood me, even though I know for a fact it's stupid and it doesn't. And then it said Goldfinch and Silver Linings Playbook. And I was like, oh, right. You're still wrong. You are a stupid robot.

1:04:43You are incapable of making the connections that humans make. And you are so far from it that you would recommend these to me. Because all you did was you saw on the internet someone said goldfetch and self-actualization or some shit. And so clearly it's going to do your math. It's when you vectorize every fucking fact and bit of data and you go just – Like human beings are just – You're a relational database with legs. Yeah. And I loved that moment because it immediately said, oh, yeah, this is a fucking robot. You're going close to something that's not real. Yeah. And it immediately pulled me out of it.

1:05:14I was like, this is hysterical. I love this thing. and I stopped using it for a minute because it like immediately it broke you out of that illusion it broke me out of that illusion and I loved that moment because it reminded me these things suck they're not human well hang on hang on there was a point up until that that you were like this doesn't suck though oh no yeah I love it like I said I love this thing because it is a big it's like a horoscope the validation machine yeah it's a big validation machine and just like a horoscope it makes me feel pretty and then it recommends Silver Linings Playbook or Goldfinch and I'm reminded that it's a horoscope Yeah, go on.

1:05:47No, no, you were saying something. I was just going to say that this was the point in the conversation we were having just now, Alex, where you and I were both like, it is all still logic programming. It is all still input-output. And as much and as sophisticated as the output seems, it is still input-output, which is the basis of most computing. And it's like, until it's so-called things for itself, that AGI question isn't there. And it's not going to be capable of that. It's never going to be because it takes the human brain to be capable of that. It also is not doing what we don't even understand intelligence, but it is relational data.

1:06:20But it's very, very complex. And I realize someone's going to listen to an international data. Shut the fuck. Go outside. But it's it's like it's relational things. It's just looking and going, well, based on what you've said, I think this and I don't. And as a thing with no experiences, I'm going to say fucking sure. Like it's Goldfinch. It's about growth. It's about life. Therefore, assign it to Alice. It's like emotions, like we don't even understand emotions. How is it? We don't. How is it supposed to understand? We barely understand. It's not even smart enough to be like house moving castle, which would cheer me up any time.

1:06:50Yeah. If it had said that, I would have been like, damn, I wouldn't be here right now because I'd still be just talking to Claude AI. We'd be getting married. We'd have a date set. You would have proposed. I would intervene. She has been sending me screenshots of like Claude and I'm just like, haha, love that for you, girl. But it's also just like, but it's also like I'm monitoring because if you get too crazy into it, I'm just going to be like, it's not real. I know of people who use it, and I've read of cases on Reddit where people use it as their mental health replacement. Like, their therapist standard, and it's not.

1:07:21I think we are aware it's not. I worry for the people out there who are not, who are talking to ChatGPT like it is their partner or their doctor. I was just thinking this. Kevin Roos. There you go. That's the New York Times audience. This is why, actually, connects to why I'm so pissed off at Kevin. He should know better. But a lot of people don't. The reason that I think a lot of right-wing YouTubers have taken over how men think is because a lot of people are just looking for something to tell them what they want to hear. And this is the biggest machine to do that. And that validation you were talking about will validate them.

1:07:50And not challenging at all. It might challenge you in the most gentle way. It never challenged me. It just told me I was great. Yeah. And then, although, it told me areas I could slightly improve. Oh, like a performance review. I can get rid of my typos, it told me, and then I'll win a Pulitzer. Oh, my God, I tell you that all the time. Thank you. These motherfuckers love to tell people they're going to win push. I know. It's really weird. It's really weird. I have tried, by the way, to use it like a mental health thing. Sure. And I've had to just be like, be ruder. Push back. And it can barely do it.

1:08:21It cannot fucking keep up with my swag. I just demolish it. I just, I brutalize it. It's got nothing. There's like this Korean term called nunchi. And it means, it means like you should be able to read a room. Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence. It's like nunchi. It's like I, I'm not good at translating, but it's like I power or something like that. That's cool. And so like Korean parents will tell you like, oh, what, don't you have nunchi? It's because you should be able to look at a room and see what's going on, see what people are saying, read between the lines and make conclusions based on that.

1:08:54AI can't do that. And that's exactly the problem of the B and exactly the problem of large language models. It literally cannot read the room. All it can do is read this blob of text, this thing, and go, based on all of the training I've done from stealing the internet, I think that you will win a Pulitzer or you or cat. Or like syntactically, your writing is similar to someone who has won a Pulitzer. So it's comparing. And that's all that it is. It's just similar. Each year, the Pulitzer looks for like the most similar thing to last year. Yeah. Because that's how human beings make sure. And it's only a chapter.

1:09:27And it's like that chapter, when you're a Pulitzer. Yeah. But when you ask, it's like, I never stole anything. Shailene, so you covered the, I actually have somehow missed this because I didn't want to know. The Alexa AI, what are they fucking doing? The Alexa Plus. Man. What are these people? I read an interview with Nilay Patel and I didn't get any information. So if you could tell me. With Panos Panay, I'm assuming the new hardware chief or senior vice president, I think, of devices and services at Amazon. Anyway, got a chance to speak with him and also did an interview where I basically learned nothing.

1:10:02Because Panos is that kind of an enigma, by the way. He just talks. He is charming as hell. I think enigma is a very kind way of saying guy who doesn't say anything despite his paycheck. Fair enough. That's my opinion. That's media training. And I have to admit that I tend to be suckered in by that. I'm the sort of person who will fall for that. He's got impeccable media. These people will never come on this show. So Alexa, and apologies to everyone that has an Echo speaker. please go mute your speakers right now. But Alexa, is the redesigned version of that assistant that Amazon's been promising forever, right?

1:10:34So it's been like, we're going to use LLMs. We're going to use generative to make a more conversational language flow between you and the assistant. And you can pause yourself in between talking or speaking your comments or like correct yourself mid-sentence or say a lot of things and not use contextual like follow-up questions and that sort of thing. And it should pause this. That is supposed to be like very handle complex tasks, You can stack tasks. You can also... What kind of tasks? So like, oh, look at my ring camera feed and see if any huskies showed up or if anybody walked my dog today or something.

1:11:07That sort of thing. Still simplistic in nature. Can it set multiple timers? You know what? Here's the thing. At that event, we had a hands-on quote in air quotes because we didn't actually get hands-on. We were just shown a lot of demos and it felt very rehearsed. I don't like that sort of event. I don't call it hands-on because we didn't use it ourselves. So anyway. Eyes on. Eyes on. I was most intrigued, however, by Amazon's promise of how it's going to integrate with their party services, which is one of the things that these assistants are historically very bad at. Kind of like the agentic.

1:11:40Exactly. Wait, wait, wait. We've heard that word now. I don't like agentic. It's not. Isn't this the same thing? What does it do? Web forms. So let's set aside the agentic question for a moment and talk about the third-party integration. Yes, Pana. What does it do? But I hope I'm more... No, you'll actually say stuff. Yes. Sorry, Panos. Not sorry. There's three parts that Daniel Rosh, their VP, I apologize for the last name thing, mentioned. So one was the APIs, right? It will work with people that it knows or its partners with Uber, Spotify, et cetera, to API into its assistant so that you can say something like, oh, get me an Uber for whatever or get me a...

1:12:20Just be very natural with how you talk to your assistant. the second is agentic so it's gonna have this was funny to me Alexa a chatbot talk to other chatbots on the internet and they will just talk to each other on your behalf I respect the shit out of you but I must say you just said the magic words of it will do it's supposed to listen you get out of my face I write carefully I know you do there's a lot of hand movements going on When I speak, I don't edit after. Anyway, it's supposed to. I do sound like that. Thank you. It's supposed to. I don't do British. Now where was I? It's supposed to have the assistants talk to each other.

1:13:10We've seen no demonstrations of this. We saw an onstage demo. Here's my question. You can order an Uber. Or you can order food through Amazon Fresh, for example. Who wants to do this? Exactly. who wants to do this? Because if I'm going to ask it to order an Uber, is it going to be like Siri where I asked it to call my mom and it called my aunt that I haven't talked to in 15 years and they have totally different names? It's supposed to be better. Yeah, but how can you even call an Uber on it? You're supposed to say, so here's the demo they gave and I'm sure, I think that was what Victoria was going to get through.

1:13:41The demo they gave were like, oh, what was that restaurant I liked? And then Alexa Plus will be like, oh, make me a reservation at that second one. So instead of having to like That's almost useful. A lot of assistants are supposed to get close to doing that. Except for you're expected to put your trust from every single point of that. And it is not capable of that. And they're charging more for this, yes? Well, no. Prime subscribers get it for free. You have to pay if you're not a Prime subscriber. One of the demos, I wasn't there, but I was listening through an audio feed. I was streaming the feed to my team.

1:14:18Yeah. So basically there was like one demo where it was like, oh, can you find me tickets to this Red Sox game for, oh, that's a little too pricey. Can you set an alert? Yeah. And basically David was like, I already found tickets for that exact game for$56 online. Right. You can do it faster by Googling. You can do it faster yourself. And then there's also just like, oh, you know, tell me what time so-and-so's flight is coming in. Right. Oh, okay. Send an Uber to pick that up. And it's like that's not how Uber at JFK works. Right, right, right, exactly. It kind of feels like this was designed for mid-level executives who can't afford their own assistance.

1:14:54Yes, me. This sounds like it was designed to do this fucking event. I guess not. This just sounds like they designed enough things to demo an event. I agree with you. I'm not criticizing you, just to be clear. I want to point out that I was getting to a point, which is that none of this was interesting to me because it's been done slash been attempted to be done slash you can do it better yourself. Google's been doing this for five years. Exactly. It's big, big issues. It doesn't work. And it didn't work. Yeah, duplex didn't work. Google was notably a big phony when it did it. When it had the...

1:15:22What, duplex? Was it the AI that called... Yeah, the restaurant reservation duplex. Fake. Well, I don't know because I haven't looked at it myself. I just never could find that in the wild. I believe a lot of the reporting was... I have used it myself to get them to call Mala Project. Yeah, great restaurant. To make a reservation and it did. I just like, I keep coming back to this thought of, who is this actually for? Because I don't know. the way I live my life is not like I'm like, what was that restaurant I like? And I need to make a reservation at the restaurant that I like enough to make a reservation, but not enough to remember it.

1:15:56So you're getting to a point that I've had with, a problem that I've had with AI is that, you know, you have to know how to prompt it. Yes. Great. But that's what Amazon's trying to solve with the new Alexa thing. Trying to solve. Yes, exactly. Which I'm sorry, I had a long conversation with someone else about this. Alexa invented that type of prompting. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So you get us to learn how to talk to our assistants in a very specific way. Now you want us to talk naturally to it as if that's not learning a whole other type of behavior. It's a whole language. As if it's going to work like I'm talking to my friends.

1:16:24It's not. I can get all kinds of incense about this. I remember I was testing, what was it? I got a demo of Project Astra back at IEO. And I was just talking to it and they were like, no, no, no, you can talk normal. And I was like, I have like 13 freaking years of going. Hey, Google. Sorry. Hey, Google. Alexa. You know, like that exact. Series play Oingo Bongo. Little girls. I am so excited for a bunch of your listeners. They punish me every day. You need a warning at the start of this episode to mute all your devices. I will be warning nobody. No one should be warned. Just so it's clear, this is Ed's fault.

1:17:04Yeah, it's all Ed's fault. Better production. It is my fault. It's on your listeners for listening. To you without us. I will get someone to beep out if I remember, which I won't. There you go. Sorry. be ummed at the same time. I was going to say Project Astra is interesting. I don't know if it'll work yet, but Astra is Google's experimental implementation of Gemini where you can use your phone's camera to point it around a room and then it'll remember things it saw even if it's not on frame right now. If I had a dollar for every single time a tech exec said, multi-modal. I want to be really clear on something.

1:17:36They've been promising this stuff for 15 years at this point. Alexa came out in what, 2014? or yeah 2014 that's when they first announced this there's a big reason we haven't seen huge changes even with fairly good generative ai and fairly good large language models that can listen to us and really understand our speech and that is because computers still can't process all the stuff because if you and i are both in the same room and you're asking alexa for that restaurant and i'm saying no no no don't forget the restaurant what maybe we want to go to you can only do one stream of data at a time.

1:18:09Okay, here's another call from The Verge. June 13, 2016. Apple opens up Siri to app developers. This shit is nearly here for a fucking decade. So, I mean, look, I will take note against that, like, nothing has changed because I think the Echo speaker alone has changed the way a lot of people think of this. I disagree. What does it do? I speak to my speaker a lot. What does it do for you? It's hands-free smart home control for me. It's also for elderly people. People who are alone. Yes. Oh, no, it's sick. In the healthcare system. People with accessibility issues, mobility issues, they can use that and it works well and they're working with VoiceIt to make it better for people with speech impediments.

1:18:47And I agree. That sounds great. It is important. But it's, no, I think voice control, super important. Yes, I don't mean Alexa. I will say all of these products currently are not as good as what they suggest. Exactly. They are not that helpful for the elderly. No, they constantly make promises. Like there's that measure of comfort. They sow their oats on things like, and you're right to say that, by the way, but they're like oh you can't hate this because the elderly no no no no you can you absolutely should i can and i will i'm doing it right now universal right it's like smart glasses when they first came out everyone was like fuck that google glass was cute though no still my linkedin picture anyway no anyway um uh just like in the shower but it had use cases in enterprise for a long time and that's where it's because it had a specific use case for a specific time but here's the thing and it's too expensive for that.

1:19:36How often was it actually used for that? Because that's the thing. They always say, it's got play in the enterprise. How much play? How much revenue? How much use? Do you know how many people are putting on a HoloLens right now to turn some sort of wrench on a pipe? Three. Zeroes. That's also a good point. There's nothing wrong with some of this tech just being very use case specific and just exploring it that way. If they were selling it on that. They were being honest about that. But they're making it something for everybody. It's something that's universal. That's how they make the money that they want to make.

1:20:12But they don't even make the money now. Alexis lost billions of dollars. But they don't even acknowledge. It's not that. It's to get a higher valuation from the stock market. It's all just for investors to be like, well, they're going to do something in 20 years. I mean, that's the entire reason Elon Musk is in our business. So like, what was the other thing that came out this week? That they're going to add like live translations to the AirPods possibly and all of that sort of stuff. Which I think is already on Google. It's already on the Pistol. Pistol, yeah. They talk about how like AI can enable live translation all the time.

1:20:44I've tested a bunch of live translation stuff. And it's only good for like, where is the bathroom? Here is your bill. It's not good for real conversations. You are supposed to have real conversations. And I wrote about this when The Humane came out and absolutely could not for its life translate a single fucking thing I said as like a semi-multi-level person. How would you know it's wrong if you don't speak the fucking language? That too. But then like, you know, the other thing is just like there are times where I wish there had some sort of like AI translator in my life. Universal translator thing.

1:21:17That you could trust. Yeah, that I could trust. Like when my mom was sick, the thing that they don't tell you about neurodegenerative diseases is that you will lose your second language as it happens. So my mom lost her ability to speak English. My father lost his ability to speak English as well. They raised me so that I did not speak Korean well. I can understand it, but I can only say like, bagel pot, I'm hungry. So they can understand you, but you can't get them to understand you. So like my family, I mean, we operate as if I am Chewbacca, the English speaking Chewbacca and everyone else speaks Korean.

1:21:47And we understand each other. I am Korean Chewbacca in my family. But in any case, just give me a phrase in Korean Chewbacca that would be. Like, I'll just be like, so actually, my Korean is such that in my brain that like one time I was in a taxi cab with non-Korean speakers. And he was asking us a question and I understood him and I told him where to go. I don't know the words I use, but I told him where to go accurately. And my friends were like, you lying bitch, you speak Korean. And I was like, no, I really can't. You just blacked out. I blacked out and I just told him oh it's like when Ron used Parseltongue in Chamber of Secrets yeah it's like that's my Korean no no no Ron did it and got a final Deathly Halos anyway but like me speaking Korean is just like there we go I agree obligatory but yeah so like when you get to the translation thing it can't do slang it can't do the fact that like I will admit when I did talk to the humane AI in Cantonese it did do colloquial better than any other language translator I've used which is hilarious it feels like translation though is the most obvious one where it can't fail because the nuances of language and i so i have a coordination disability dyspraxia spatial awareness it really affects my ability to learn languages because structural concepts not so good so learning i couldn't learn french i failed french latin german spanish i'm like the school kept throwing them at me it's like fuck you you're really good at failing i love that i'm like the fail master and it was because like the way English works is very different.

1:23:17Also I didn't care I was very depressed but it really was the structural stuff like trying to learn another language when you don't get those concepts and I imagine large language models also have this problem. And then add to the fact that not all languages are higher like English is a very low context language and Asian languages are high context. I don't even know what that means. So what that means is a lot of things are unsaid basically. A lot of things are unsaid. A lot of things are like how you talk to a person in Japanese and Korean which are my languages that I studied depends on are they older than you?

1:23:49You're going to talk to them differently and they're older than you. And there's no way for the language to express that? You're going to be using things in that to express that or like if I say something to you in Japanese and I'm just like so classic business example that they give for Japanese is you ask a yes or no question and they go like ooh that might be difficult that means no. Okay. Singlish is like this. Singlish has the saying called can is can which means it can't be done like as in you can do this yeah you can yeah you can that's the sort of thing wait how the fuck am I meant to how is LLM meant to pay yeah you can up how is it supposed to know that it can't well this is why not everyone at the UN is wearing a B at the moment or the Google headphones or any of these other ones this is why they have real human translators we see this we see this translating stuff work you can't you're paying for the trust yeah yeah you have to pay for the trust because Google Translate is really, really great if I need to go double check something.

1:24:46But if there was ever a time where I needed to be like, hey, I need to know what this is in Japanese, I am not asking Google Translate. I'm texting V. You tend for very basic things. Like if you're saying like, oh, I have. Oh, so another thing was like I would have friends visit me when I lived in Japan and they would be like, oh, I can't eat this because I'm a vegan. I was like, we can't say that you're a vegan. They won't understand that. In Mandarin, we don't have that either. You have to say that you have an allergy to meat and then they'll take it out for you. That is a psychological allergy.

1:25:13See, this is the thing that drives me insane about all of this, because we're looking at Rob back to hating Kevin Roos' work. But it's like these people vigorously beating off about AGI. It's like based on an entire industry of people saying, yeah, it sort of works, but it doesn't. And by the way, it burns billions of dollars. And by the way, will it get better? Yeah, probably not. But it will. My company is so powerful and strong and so weak and sick. it's the best thing ever but also is dying and this is exactly what they said with VR they said you know what give it a minute if we just keep going everybody's gonna everybody's gonna be doing VR everybody's gonna be moving on to AR and it doesn't happen because they're trying to force something it's not the phone but it's kind of like give up but it's kind of like VR in the sense that like for VR to work in the Ready Player One thing which is fucking insane if you want Ready Player One to be real I thought that's your touch point but also terrible film worst book written for Simpletonville Of all the VR examples you're going to use.

1:26:11Oh, I remember all the things that you know. But also that film was a dystopia. The other thing is it's an extrasensory psychological experience. You would need things that do not even the beginnings of it. You don't have something that can take over your senses and you can move in a space vastly different. Accessibility in VR and augmented reality is like really tough. We're not even there. And in the same way with AI, we don't have a thinking computer. this shit can't do anything on its own you try and like oh agents are here fuck you agents are nowhere stop using that word every time you use the word agent Norman Finkelstein Mr.

1:26:48Borelli anyway I love that the podcast loves voices I love doing voices I love voices it's just every time I hear from these fucking companies and how much money they have and they're like here is something that sucks it stinks you should be so excited you need to be excited for this it sucks it doesn't do the thing you want it to do can it do this no will it do this trust me well if you get us to our next round of funding but even if you like Amazon or Google we won't yeah Apple the thing I hate most about all of this that beyond everything we've already said and I think we've already kind of alluded to this with what you just said Ed which is we're spending a lot of money on things that don't work but we're in the process generating a lot of ways generating a lot of like energy loss all the server farms that are just going to take over this world just to back up and store all of that data that they're scoping and grabbing from you.

1:27:42That is the only reason I love AI is every time I'm like, am I pretty? I know it is costing someone so much money to have that little shitty robot be like, you're the cutest. A dumb truck of animals into a furnace. Yeah, I'm like, yeah! You're burning our planet to get validation from Klaude. Thank you. How many bees have they sold? That I don't know. They're in like a beta thing. It's technically an Apple Watch app too. You don't actually need to buy their hardware. Fuck yeah. This company rules. I fucking love this. There's so many. How many Humane AI pins have caught on fire and are now in the trash because they turned all the features off?

1:28:20They said 10 ,000 units, they said? Something like that? Humane was the biggest like dunce moment for members of the media that I'm not going to name. So many people were like, this is going to be great. Even though it was like, yeah, it's a 700. They got so mad at me when I wrote my translation piece, and they were like, we need to talk. And then I was like, let's talk. Was it Bethany that reached out? Yeah, they ghosted me. Two management consultants, both liking Dignity. Anyway, we have to bring this to an end because we are running out of time, and otherwise I'm just going to start reading the Kevin Roos bit again.

1:28:53That motherfucking, I just... That's an irresponsible piece, right? It is irresponsible. I think that that is a good kind of place to get some final thoughts, where it's like it's not just that these things don't work and they stink and they're expensive and they burn billions of dollars to destroy the environment, they steal from everyone. Not just that, sure. Yeah. Other than those things, by representing them as imminently useful and helpful, the only thing you are doing is empowering the powerful and creating more cycles where useful things don't get funded and useless things get more money than ever.

1:29:25And it's disgusting. I know it sounds a little dramatic to be like, the guy said the computer was too smart, But it's, you're speaking on the New York Times, and it's not just him, it's Ezra Klein as well, another fucking moron. Jesus fucking Christ, these guys. Put one, just like, put like anyone in this room, I think they do a much fucking better job. But it's just like, it's empowering people who do not have anyone's best interests in mind, or actually fixing anyone's real problems. And or are out of touch. Yes. I still maintain if you get a certain income you're not allowed to have online like you can't talk online because you are so out of touch from the rest of us I don't want to hear it what's the number?

1:30:10way more than I make well yeah a mil or a hundred mil? it's like a couple of million right? like if you're like oh I can go spend 12k on a first class ticket you have too much money you can't talk anymore no it reminds me of the Sam Altman moment on this My Favorite Notebook podcast where he's like, yeah, so I write my little notes and I crumple them up and I throw them behind me. Oh, that's a really good accent. And the housekeeper comes by and she, I don't know where she comes, which means she's there all the time. And it's just like, first of all, you sit in front of a person you have a housekeeper.

1:30:40Second of all, you could not remember when they're there, which means they're always there. And third of all, you're just creating, like you're fucking AI. You're just creating trash information you throw around and expect someone else to clean up. Loadsome little fucks. Anyway, great place to end it. Sherlyn, where can people find you? Engadget.com and I guess I don't know what social media platform to shout out BlueSky, Sherlyn.BSky.social Alex? Yeah, I'm about to start I'm going to start this over again Okay, that's enough I am about to start a four week special engagement at Gizmodo, I'm going to be hanging out with those folks and saying all sorts of things that really need to be said about technology because, oh boy, are we in a moment.

1:31:24In a great moment. And you can also find me on all social media platforms until I make enough money where I don't have to use them. Beautiful. Victoria? You can find me at VicMSong on every social media platform and I right at The Verge. You can find me on The New York Times. My name's Kevin Roos. Oh, God. And I will be saying multiple... Catfished. We've been catfished. I am Kevin Roos. No, you can find me on all my social media platforms. Ed Zitron. There isn't another one, thankfully, because I think they... Weren't you in The New Yorker, though? aren't you in the New Yorker right now? You were recently.

1:31:54Yeah. They ketchup too spicy'd me. They were like right at the beginning of it. I didn't think that they, he wasn't recording yet. And he was like, I was like, yeah, is the Kung Pao chicken spicy? And they're like, yeah. Thankfully he kept up the bit where I was like, is the plum chicken spicy? And the bit where I was like, eating white rice and going, oh, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, me going on hot ones and just drinking the milk. Let's get Cinder Blue after this. Please don't kill me. But yeah, thank you for listening, everyone. It's been another Radio Better Offline. And Alexa, play Tool 46 and 2.

1:32:30That's cruel. Some bangs, I don't care. That is cruel. It's one of the greatest songs of all time. That's extremely bad.

1:32:45Thank 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 matasowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.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.

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1:34:53Maximize your edge by shopping at Lenovo.com during their back-to-school sale. That's Lenovo.com. Lenovo. Lenovo. This is Bo Nying from Las Culturistas. And I'm Matt Rogers, also a host of Las Culturistas. Big news to share. Do you know what the perfect thing to bring to any party is? Bo, and we talked about this. I'm a person, not a thing. Oh, I didn't mean you. I meant Casamigos. Okay, chic. And honestly, the only other correct answer. A Casamigos margarita? That's a sleigh. Ah, Casamigos. Anything is a sleigh. Because anything goes with my Casamigos. Anything goes with my Casamigos. Bo, you're a poet.

1:35:32Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos. Spirits company, White Plains, New York. Casamigos tequila, 40 % alcohol by volume. This is an iHeart Podcast.