Ed Helms Answers Your Hard Questions

25:42Now, how long do you guys think that we will actually have human scammers calling people? How long before all of these are just hyper-convincing AIs speed dialing people? I mean, if you believe the research about persuasion that we've been talking about on the show might not be all that much longer. But I have to say, Kevin, that might be like a human rights victory because then maybe they would take these people that are locked up in these scam centers and actually let them go home. Yeah, that's one job I would love to see automated very quickly. Also, like, it's not your best self to do this, right?

26:12Yeah. It's not kind of reinforcing the best side of you to be making someone else's life harder. Even if they're not in some sort of, like, terrible situation. They're just a scammer. Like, strive for better in yourself. Do better. As Melania Trump once said, be best. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up, here is an email that came to us from a listener named Louis, or Louis, I suppose. He wonders, essentially, is it ever right to commit a crime in order to prevent another crime? Oh, here we go. So I'll read an excerpt from the email. He says, a couple of years ago, circa 2016, I had an idea I pursued, abandoned, and wondered about ever since.

26:57I started guessing private keys of a well-known blockchain using some heuristics that I thought some less aware people might try to use to generate their addresses. It worked quite well, and I found one address with several thousand dollars worth of cryptocurrency on it. Most of the accounts I found had transactions on them that had been completely emptied, and when checking the accounts that had emptied them, they were marked as fraudulent by several blockchain explorers. So to recap, I had found a stack of gold and it was only a matter of time before a bad guy swooped in and stole it. After some deliberation with my parents and girlfriend, now wife, I decided that the safest course of action was to do nothing.

27:36What do you think should have been the best and legally sound reaction? Inaction? Taking the tokens as my own? Donating them to charity? Or maybe something else I have not thought about? What do you guys make of this? yeah this is not complicated to me and just stay out of the stay out of the mess it's like it's like jumping into uh you know like a meeting with a bunch of mobsters and being like what's this is a moral quandary should i join in with them or should i just leave this is like actually the plot of no country for old men yeah i have to say we should disqualify this uh for not being a hard question.

28:18This is just like, you know, do not commit a crime and hopefully that will save you. Now, I will say as far as some advice on what they could do that would be productive with this, some, you know, blockchain projects, a lot of tech projects have these kind of bug bounty programs where if you discover a security flaw in their system, you can contact them and say, hey, I'm a security researcher and I found this bug. And sometimes they will pay you money for doing that. So if this blockchain project, whatever it was, has a bug bounty program, this person could actually turn that in and make the whole system safer for everyone and maybe get a reward out of it.

28:55That's a great idea, Kevin. Do that. So one last one before we get to our AI questions. This is from a listener who wonders, when did headphones become optional? Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm calling from Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I have noticed that there's an epidemic these days of people watching videos out loud on their phone in public. at restaurants, movie theaters, on trains. And I've tried various different ways to politely ask people if they have headphones or if they could turn off the sound on their games or their videos on their phones to varying degrees of success. Often people are quite rude to me and just flat out say no.

29:35So I was wondering how you would handle this. Thank you. I love this question. Ed Helms, how would you handle this? It sounds like she's handling it exactly right. You say something. And I rarely see this. I've seen it. I did see it on an airplane recently, and I was stunned. Because on an airplane, you have to listen so loud. Right. And this person had their phone just cranked all the way up watching, like, a basketball game or something super loud. And, yeah, I think her approach. Did you say something? I didn't. I was a few. He can't say something. Do you know what social media is going to do to him if he says something?

30:12I was a few rows back. It wasn't that bad. I just, but I could tell. For me, it wasn't that bad. I could just tell it was crazy. But yeah, I don't get it. I feel like certain, there's just like some people don't understand how awful that is. It's so true. The reason I was so excited to get this question is because I see this all the time now. Every copy, I just spent two weeks in New York. I would say every other subway car I was on, somebody was doing exactly this thing. Their behavior seems insane to me. I'm an extremely conflict avoidant person. I would never once think to do what Sarah did and actually ask these people to maybe turn it down, although that does seem like the right thing to do.

30:47So I don't know what I could do. The only thing I'm left thinking you could do is try to guess this person's private keys and steal their crypto. What would you do? Or put your own headphones on. What I would do, and I don't want to counter this that much because I don't spend a lot of time in places where this is going on. Kevin only takes private cars everywhere. No, but I think my strategy, if the sort of earnest request to put on headphones or something or turn down the volume failed, I think I would just start asking them questions. I'd be like, hey, what game are you playing there? What are the rules of Temple Run?

31:21What's your high score? You just troll them. Yeah, like I see you're watching a basketball game. Like, fill me in. Who are the hot draft picks this season? And eventually maybe they just like catch on and get so annoyed that they turn it off and do something else. I actually, I would love, I don't think I could ever do that, but I would love to observe you doing that. It is crazy because, you know, headphones are so cheap at this point. I mean, you can get earbuds for$15, I bet. And yet it seems like the cheaper they get, the more people are just saying, you know what, the heck with it. Everybody can listen to the basketball game with me.

31:51The weird thing, too, is when people are actually having conversations on speakerphone. Like just hold it up to you. Yes! Like, they'll hold the phone in front of their face like a little piece of pizza and talk into it with the speaker on. Yes. Just put it up your ear. I was, again, being in New York, I saw multiple people are just walking down the street FaceTiming with people. And I'm like, is it because you look so cool because you're walking through the streets of New York and you just sort of really want people to have the visual? Like, I do not understand. You're so likely to just, you know, fall into an open manhole cover.

32:23It's true. That is always happening. Yeah. All right. When we come back, we'll tackle your hard questions about AI, including a worker who fears backlash for using AI at work and a boyfriend who worries that AI could doom his relationship. Uh-oh.

33:01We'll be right back.

33:26real quick in our best speed read. I work at the New York Times, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations related to the training of AI systems. And my boyfriend works at Anthropic. Ed, do you have a disclosure about AI that you'd like to add? No. Okay. I'm terrified of it. Okay, no, that's good. I feel like the singularity is around the corner and I'm absolutely petrified. So I like AI, is I guess how I hedge that. Yeah, no, that's a good disclosure. Okay, so one clear theme that has emerged from the questions that our listeners submitted is that there is a lot of uncertainty around how and when to use AI at work.

34:03So our next two listeners are both grappling with that subject, but from quite different perspectives. Let's start with the perspective of a manager. This comes to us from Scott Kay, who asks, should I call out a junior person using AI and be a hypocrite? His email reads, as a team lead, I sometimes use AI to help brainstorm solutions when my developers hit a wall, But every so often, I'll see one of my junior developers magically land on the exact same AI suggested solution, and it's painfully obvious they didn't invent it themselves. And then I'm stuck thinking, do I call them out and ask, hey, walk me through your thought process here while fully aware that I'm over here secretly tag teaming with AI myself?

34:46So what do you think about this? Is it hypocritical to call out a junior employee for using AI when you are using it yourself? Yes, it is. But I also think that we're just in this early moment with AI, and we haven't quite figured out how to navigate these things. It seems like maybe everyone should just be owning their AI use a little more transparently. But that sort of diminishes the magic of AI. I guess people are thrilled to sort of present things as their own ideas. I think this is sort of a strange question for this reason. Most of the developers I know who are using AI understand that everyone is using AI and that if you solved a problem using AI, most people would be like, yeah, like we're all solving problems with AI.

35:33So I'm curious. If Scott were here right now, I would say why is this an issue? Is it that the junior dev is suggesting really bad suggestions from the AI? Because if that's the case, then I think AI isn't really the issue, right? The issue is that your junior colleague is sort of bringing bad ideas into the workplace, and that is worth calling out and saying, hey, this actually wouldn't work, and here's why. Yeah, I agree with you both. I think we just need to presume that unless specified otherwise, people are going to start using AI in their jobs, basically whatever their job is. I was hearing a talk from the economist Tyler Cowen the other day who teaches at George Mason University was talking about how he now requires all of his students to use an AI chatbot for their assignments.

36:20And he doesn't consider it plagiarism. He just grades the finished product. And I think that's how like we should evaluate work at our jobs too is like is it good or not? And if it's not good, then you used AI wrong or you didn't use it in the right ways. And if it's good and you used AI, like more power to you. What matters is the finished product. I just am not sure, especially in an academic context, if that if the finished product represents how educated the student is on the subject and that that's what the that's what the grade should reflect. Like an educational environment is not a widget making.

36:56I guess that's right. I mean, that's definitely a fringe position in academia where we still do care that people are are thinking through things on their own. But in the context of like a software team at a big company, like what matters is whether the code compiles or not. Yes, for sure. Not whether, you know, you use the certain tool. Do you worry though like as somebody with kids that like they're going to get to school and they're going to be using chat GPT everything and, you know, they might not develop the critical thinking skills you want them to have? Yeah, absolutely. I mean it goes back to what I was saying before about just the generation of creative things, you know.

37:29And I work in an industry where that's – the people that are good at that are really rewarded for it and it's highly competitive. But when no one is as good as the AI, then not only is like – does the question emerge like what's the point of doing it if the AI can just keep doing it better? The other sort of darker question is like what's the point of learning to do it or studying the art forms? Right. And I mean, that's a very dystopian long view, but I'm not worried about that in the near term for my kids. But I do feel like that's kind of. I would just be happier if it let me learn more easily.

38:11Like, you know, in The Matrix when Keanu's like, I know Kung Fu because they just uploaded it into his brain. I would also like to know Kung Fu. I would love that. Put that amount of effort into it. And I will say, I'm a musician. I really struggle to remember song lyrics. I can't wait till I can put on glasses and just read song lyrics and suddenly have like a thousand songs at my disposal. That sounds really, really fun and cool. All right. We're going to get emails from people who say that they've invented this. So we'll pass those along to you. Okay, great. All right. Now let's consider the perspective of somebody who is just starting out in their career.

38:46This listener asked to be anonymous for fear of backlash from colleagues, but she emailed the following. What do you all think about people who are AI snobs? I am a NASA scientist, and surprisingly, I found that for an organization full of scientists, there's a lot of snobbery over being better than using AI. People basically act like those who use AI are too stupid to solve problems themselves, and they are smarter than everyone else because they are capable of an existence free of AI assistance. I've even heard, quote, even if AI can help you solve a problem faster, why would you avoid the cognitive stimulus?

39:17That's the whole fun of being alive. So I guess my question is, how do you respond to people who keep acting like they are better than you simply because they don't use AI? Wow. Have you heard a version of this, Ed? No, I'm not sure I've heard this bubble up. My hunch is that those people are probably lying. That they are using AI behind closed doors. But I haven't encountered anti-AI snobbery. Oh, I have. I mean, I think there are people who are reacting this way basically as a fear response. Like, they worry that if they use AI, like, and it makes them smarter, then maybe they weren't that smart to begin with.

39:59Or maybe they're going to lose their job. Or I think there are a lot of, like, reasons that people react this way to AI, including the fact that they just cannot believe that a computer could do what they do better than them. And everyone seems to have a version of this for their own job. Like everyone kind of thinks that AI is going to take everyone else's jobs, but me, I'm the special one and what I do can't be replicated. And I see that attitude a lot. Yeah. I mean this is one where I want to be careful because, look, I do believe if you have a job and you don't want to use AI, you don't have to use AI if you don't want to.

40:33If you love the cognitive stimulus of everything you're doing, like that's great. Like you probably have a great job. How should you relate to people who do use AI? I would say with kindness, you know, particularly if they're using it well. And I think a lot of folks, and I would include myself among these people, do feel like it's giving me at least some kind of advantage in some set of things, you know. So I do believe that over the long run, more and more people are going to come around because they're going to see people like our emailer here just kind of doing well at their jobs. And they're going to assume that, you know, not just the AI, but all the productivity tools that they're using are helping them, you know, get a little bit of an advantage.

41:13And so, yeah, I guess that's my answer to that one. I mean, that's a very kind and empathetic response that both of you have given. There's also the option of just trolling your coworkers. It's like you could go over with an abacus and take away their calculator and say, I didn't want to deprive you of the cognitive stimulus of using the abacus by taking this cheap shortcut. Let me take the abacus. Just use all cognitive power. That's good. Yes. All right, so we have two related final questions that I think get at the heart of how AI is complicating many people's deepest and most meaningful relationships.

41:54Let's play the first video. Hey, Kevin, Casey, and Ed. Dan here from Chicago. I'm a devout listener of the show. So I recently started a new relationship, and after sharing an episode of Hard Fork with my girlfriend, I realized that she hates AI. She has a visceral negative reaction anytime I mention something AI related, unless it's Adobe Illustrator or like A1 steak sauce, and it makes her so uncomfortable that she doesn't even want to entertain a thought about it. Now this has become a real point of tension because I use AI in my everyday personal and professional life and I'm really interested in these thornier questions around the future of work, society, and what it means to be human in this new era.

42:41So how can I navigate a situation where I can't even bring up something that is so intrinsic to my life with my significant other? Kevin, I'm especially curious to hear your thoughts given that AI almost broke up your relationship too. Thanks, guys. Great question. Great question. Kevin, what are your thoughts? So, look, I have a lot of sympathy for this. I think a lot of people in my life are not as into AI as I am. My wife is sort of getting more interested in it. We talk about it sometimes, but for a long time, it was like, you know, she just, it wasn't of immediate concern to her. And so it was sort of my thing.

43:18And that's why it's so important when you're in that situation to start a podcast, because then you do actually have someone to talk about AI with without ruining your relationship. Ed, what do you think? Every relationship has things that are tough and that one person is into and another person isn't. And this feels very surmountable to me. At a certain point, the culture will probably start to, you know, AI will start to just infiltrate his girlfriend's life in ways that makes her more open to it. But even if not, it just seems like find your buddy that you can have these conversations with.

43:56Yeah. I mean, I have to confess this is not a problem I have in my relationship. If anything, the issue in my relationship is could we talk about something other than AI? But, you know, I feel like in so many relationships, there is a subject like this. you know, like sports comes to mind, you know, like maybe you're obsessed with the Golden State Warriors and your partner isn't. And every time you bring it up, you know, you see them rolling their eyes. And I just think this speaks to the fact that like it helps to have people in your life other than your primary partner that you can just kind of distribute the weight of your interests.

44:31Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of sort of AI clubs popping up around the country. I've met people when I've been out doing various events who say, you know, oh, I'm part of the local AI club. And this is a thing that I think is starting to emerge over the last couple years. And so maybe if there's one in Chicago, you could sort of find the local AI club and join that and find a way to have a weekly discussion about these things. What do people do at AI club? Casey, the first rule of AI club is you don't talk about AI club. I walked right into that one. But I will give my earnest piece of advice here because I think this is something really important is that people don't automatically buy that AI is going to be meaningful to them until they see something that they struggle with in their life that it is useful at solving.

45:22So I think one thing that you could do if you're in a relationship where one partner cares a lot about AI and the other person hates it is just to figure out, like, what do they value? Like, what things do they like doing? What do they struggle with? What are some places maybe at their job or in their personal life where they might be able to use AI? And don't force it on them, but just maybe take one of those problems and just prompt an AI model with it and see if it solves something or does something interesting for them. And then show it to the partner. Maybe try to meet them where they are and make their interest organic rather than just, like, pretending that they're into it for your sake.

45:57Yeah, but I would also say, like, take no for an answer from your partner here and, like, maybe just cool it on the AI talk for a while and, like, see if she brings it up at any point. And, like, maybe then you'll kind of have an entry point. But until then, I don't know if it's worth it. All right. Let's go to our last question here. This comes from a listener who goes by Elle. Let's take the Elle. And Elle asks, how do I help people get prepared for AI without totally freaking them out? Hi Kevin and Casey, I'm Elle and I live in the Deep South. Here's some context for my question. I've been getting anxious in conversations where AI comes up.

46:36I'm tech avoidant, but interested in tech forecasting because I wanna feel prepared for what's ahead. But most people I know aren't as tuned in as I am, so I'm hesitant to share my realistic slash grim take on the potential of AI. I don't wanna plant scary seeds in their brains. As a result, I'm feeling mentally and existentially isolated. that I'm doing better at making the best of my time in case it's running out faster than I'd hoped, which is how we should live anyway, so that's positive. On the other, I'm feeling distant from my peers and loved ones in a way that is hard to articulate. What should I say to my loved ones if it comes up?

47:12I want them to be mentally prepared but not super sad. Living in the moment but worried about frightening others. Now, Ed, I'm curious to hear your take on this because it sounds like you may have a version of this yourself. You mentioned earlier that you are worried about the singularity and you're sort of terrified that it might be coming soon. So what should Elle do about trying to live in the moment, take advantage of the time that we have, but also avoid freaking out her friends and family? It's hard not to talk about something that is scaring you or that you're obsessing over. And this may sound glib, but I think she could benefit from a therapist.

47:54Yeah. Someone that she really can explore these feelings with and help her process them and then also give her an outlet where she's not burdening friends and family with that. Because the other thing is, you know, none of us really know what's coming. And so to be – and there are a lot of AI optimists out there, and maybe they're right. So to be kind of chicken little and gloom and doom, as much as it's not a choice sometimes, feels a little premature. And again, finding an outlet, a therapist perhaps, to explore these feelings could be good. I'm glad you said that. I had the same thought. this really could benefit from therapy.

48:40And, you know, I guarantee you, Elle, you will not be the only person talking about your fears about an AI future in therapy. I think it's actually quite common here in the Bay Area for folks to talk to their therapists about that. You know, while I totally understand you're hesitant to bring everybody down with your fears about AI, I do think that part of living in a democracy is bringing up the things that you're concerned about. And there's no reason why you couldn't take, maybe, you know, break it into small chunks and talk to your friends about things that you see out there that worry you.

49:09So if you see that all of a sudden the chatbots have gotten super sycophantic and you're reading stories about people having like mystical experiences with chatbots and convincing themselves that they're the messiah and you worry about that technology like being used by young people, let's say, there's no reason why you shouldn't talk about that. In fact, I think you should talk about it. And I think one reason why we started this show, Kevin, was we like talking about these issues and We want to get other people talking about them. So I totally hear you, Elle, on not wanting to be a bummer. But, you know, I think everyone's allowed to be a bummer at least 10 or 20 percent of the time, don't you, Kevin?

49:42Yeah, although I should say, like, I spend a lot of time talking with people about AI in my life. And I have found that, like, when I'm in my sort of, like, gloomiest mood about it, when I'm feeling like my P-doom is quite high, I tend to not have good conversations with people because they sort of come away feeling like we're all screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. It sort of strips agency away from them when I talk about it like that. Whereas when I'm feeling more optimistic, I tend to have conversations that are just like sort of rooted in like wanting to help people understand things or like make them excited or give them some hope for the future.

50:24and I think that when you give people a sense that they are not just like inexorably marching toward this future that they have no control over, I think it just goes a lot better. And so my advice for these like, you know, sort of AI doom crowd is always to like, not frame things in terms of like, what will happen no matter what, but like to sort of sketch out paths for people and say, well, if we make good decisions, it could go in a really good way. And if we don't, it could go in a really bad way. But like, it's very important, I think, to not make people think that they just have no choice in the matter.

50:56What do you think, Ed? I don't know. I'm getting anxious talking about it, honestly. But in what I think is a good, healthy way, I do really like what you said, Casey, that we're allowed to be a bummer sometimes. And it is important to kind of be honest about where we're at with things with our communities and the people who care about us and love us. And also, if it's really feeling like an excessive burden, to seek help and assistance with it, whatever form that takes. Absolutely. Well, before we go, Ed, we want to give you the opportunity. Do you have a hard question you'd like to ask Kevin and I?

51:31Anything going on with technology, any dilemma you've confronted recently that we can offer you our expert assistance with? Let's see. I give my mom, who's 85, a lot of tech support. And it can be quite frustrating. and I would love some advice on sort of moving through that with grace and also to what extent it's necessary. There are times where it feels like maybe this is just not something to get figured out. And is that okay? Kevin, what are your thoughts about that? Yeah. So I have shifted my views on this recently. My mom also requires some tech support from time to time and I'm not physically there, like in the same place as her.

52:17So I often end up doing it over the phone. And so what I have found is useful is to just fix things for her. Like do not try to walk her through it. Just like the next time I am in the same place as her, just take her phone and fix all the things she doesn't like. There you go. And do it very quickly and make it very hard for her to undo those fixes. And so basically I think that there is a point at which people, They just do not want to learn the entire process of like changing some settings on something. So if you can just sort of set it up for them, they are eternally grateful and you save yourself and them a lot of grief.

52:55I think that is a perfect answer. The only thing that I would add to it is to the extent that you feel like your mom may have any curiosity about technology, I do think it's fun to nurture it a little bit. Like, yes, I think you're almost always going to be better off just like fixing it. That's just an act of love that you can give your parents is fixing things for them. But you can also see if in the process of fixing that, you might share a little bit about how it works or what you think is interesting about it. See if that sparks anything for them. Maybe they'll go off and learn a little something themselves.

53:27I have to say, I talked to my mom this week, and she told me that she had just used Claude to pick out some songs to put on a playlist for her 50th wedding anniversary party that is coming up in a couple of months. And I mean, I was beaming with pride because she'd had a good experience. She did think it was too sycophantic. It actually worried her. She sent me a screenshot. She was like, this thing is being way too nice to me. What did it say? It was like, you can't be having a 50th wedding anniversary. You're only 40 years old. That's right. It was, yeah, something in that neighborhood, you know.

54:01But what I loved about it was in the process of me talking to her all the time about AI, she was sort of like, you know what? Let me, like, investigate and see if this thing could do anything for me. And I think that is a really nice gift we can give our parents to. Amen. I do think that it is a great expression of love. Yes. Tech support. It's the least we can do for our moms. After what we put them through? Parental figures. Exactly. You better believe it. All right, Ed Helms, thank you so much for joining us. You can buy Ed's book now. It's called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups.

54:34Ed, this was great. Thanks so much for having me, guys. I feel like we made it out of this without a single snafu, and that was important to me.

55:06Hard Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. We're edited this week by Matt Collette. We're fact-checked by Ana Alvarado. Today's show was engineered by Katie McMurrin. Original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell. Our executive producer is Jen Poyant. video production by Sawyer Roquet, Pat Gunther, and Chris Schott. You can watch this full episode on YouTube at youtube.com slash hardfork. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Pui Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda. As always, you can email us at hardfork at nytimes.com.