AI Catching Students Cheating & Costco Banks on Gold Bars

0:00This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

0:27Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, can you own the trademark to a condiment? David Chang wants to find out, and he's burning bridges along the way. Then teachers are catching students using AI to write their papers at an alarming rate, but are the tools they are using reliable? It's Wednesday, April 10th. Let's ride.

0:52The viewership numbers for the men's and women's college basketball national title games are in, and the women have won. The men's title game on Monday between UConn and Purdue averaged 14.82 million viewers, A far cry from the record 18.87 million that tuned in to watch Iowa take on South Carolina. Neil, are we even surprised? This is a remarkable milestone that reflects the rise of women's college basketball. It's the first time that the women have outdrew the men in the national title game. There were some structural factors at play here. The men's game was at 920 on a Monday. I mean, I did not stay up for it.

1:28And it was also on cable TV. It was on TBS. Meanwhile, the women were at 330 on a Sunday and they were on ABC. So just a wider viewership possible. The denominator was bigger. Still don't think that takes away from how big the women's gain has grown. And even all things being equal, the women still might have outdrew the men. Absolutely. Now all that's left is for the TV contracts to kind of catch up and reflect the reality of the situation. Now let's hear from our friends over at Robin Hood. Today, I want to talk about the new Robin Hood gold card. There are a lot of great credit cards out there, but Robinhood's precious piece of metal stands out.

2:07The gold card gives you 3 % unlimited cash back on not just one, but all purchase categories. Of course, terms apply. Your morning coffee, 3 % cash back. That small tote bag that looks like a fish, 3 % cash back. Always knew you were a tote bag guy, Toby. Robinhood has always been about low or no fees. Now they're also giving you a little sugar back every time you swipe. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. but you haven't even mentioned the best part yet. 5 % cash back on travel when you book through their travel portal. The card is dropping soon, so get on the wait list now and start planning that travel.

2:41You can even bring your fish tote bag. Don't tempt me, Neil. I'll be out of office before you know it. Well, don't go yet. Learn more about Robinhood Gold Card in the Robinhood app in the App Store or Google Play Store, and you can find all the terms and conditions in the description of this podcast. Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less. Get select style selections, vinyl flooring for just$1.99 per square foot and have it installed before the festivities begin. Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit Lowe's.com slash holiday install to get started.

3:16Lowe's. We help you save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability. Install by independent contractors. See associate for details. Contiguous U.S. only. Remember when ChatGBT came out a year and a half ago and your first thought was, dang, I bet people are going to use that to cheat a lot. Well, it turns out you are 100 % correct. Students have submitted more than 22 million papers this past year that most likely use the assistance of generative AI, according to the plagiarism checker Turnitin. Since Turnitin rolled out its AI detection software last year, it has reviewed more than 200 million papers, mostly written by high school and college students.

3:5311 % contain language likely written by AI, while 3 % of papers were flagged for having 80 % or more of their content written by AI. But the flip side of using AI-powered programs like the one Turnitin offers to detect AI software can still mis-plagiarized work or worse, spit out false positives that can unnecessarily damage a student's academic career. Neil, this was always going to be an issue as soon as generative AI entered our lives, But are these tools to catch plagiarism a net positive for teachers? Yeah, it's absolutely a really interesting debate. One thing that is clear, though, I think from Turnitin's data and just broadly, students are using ChatGPT a lot.

4:35If you look at ChatGPT usage charts, it certainly fluctuates throughout the year. I remember last summer there was a dip in ChatGPT usage and everyone was wondering, oh, my God, is ChatGPT just not popular anymore? Are people moving on? Is the AI boom over? And then it started ticking back up in September and everyone was like, oh, yeah, people, people used it in school. So that was it definitely fluctuates based on school. So I think from this Turnitin data and from the ChatGPT usage data, let's just establish one thing, that it is being used a lot in schools and by students for maybe kosher purposes, but maybe not.

5:11Right. And detecting the use of AI is not as cut and dry as detecting plagiarism because generated text that is spit out of these ChatGPT and other generative AI programs, it is original text. It's not directly pulled from any sources. And there's also a little bit of nuance on how students actually use it. Some ask chatbots to write their paper and they pull large chunks from it, but other people may just use it as a brainstorm partner or as someone to check their sentence structure or something like that. So there definitely is a gray area there, which has caught a lot of students off guard.

5:46There was one video that went very viral on TikTok of a student that said, I was using Grammarly to help check my sentence structure and help check my grammar. I ended up getting my whole paper flagged for using AI. And you don't really think of Grammarly as this generative AI software, but these Turnitin and other software checkers are picking up on that and can lead to really disastrous outcomes for students who get flagged for cheating. Yeah. And I thought it was interesting that Turnitin was boasting about how many papers it caught using ChatGPT because this tool has been under a lot of criticism by universities and colleges.

6:23It's been dropped by some really big names over the past year. Vanderbilt, Michigan State, Northwestern, University of Texas all said they were not using Turnitin anymore because of the risk of false positives. Turnitin said that it may not it may flag one percent of all papers that did not use ChatGPT as using it. And Vanderbilt, in its blog post explaining its decision, said that over the course of a semester, it may get 75 ,000 papers turned in, which means for the 1 % false positive rate, you get 750 papers that were flagged as using AI that weren't. And as you mentioned before, there's no way of confirming that this was used AI.

7:04So it's literally your word against the student's word. And you're just in this weird position where you may say, look, student, you used AI. And they go, no, I didn't. But so the reason, the way you get around this is you just don't use it. Right. I mean, that is a big thing. We'll see if students actually follow through on that. The final thing I want to emphasize here is that a study found last year that of the AI detecting tools out there, 61 % had false positives rates when reviewing exams that test non-native English speakers. So if English is not your first language, you are more likely to set off an AI detector, which is just another layer on this new problem of using AI to check if you're using AI.

7:46It's just a lot more nuanced and complicated than maybe Turnitin wants you to think. All right. Sometimes you may hear a news story on the show and think, well, that was interesting. I wonder whatever happened with that. Well, we'll give you the latest updates in a segment we're calling Circle Back to borrow your favorite corporate email jargon. First, let's circle back to Boeing, whose safety culture is being put under the microscope yet again. A whistleblower went public yesterday, alleging that the sections of the fuselage for the 787 Dreamliner were improperly fastened together and could break apart mid-flight after years of service.

8:21Boeing said it knew about the issue, had fixed it, the claims were inaccurate, and that its 787s are 100 % safe for flying. Still, lawmakers are not giving Boeing the benefit of the doubt and have already invited the whistleblower, a veteran quality engineer named Sam Salipour, to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill next week to explain what he saw. And if that wasn't enough trouble for Boeing in one day, it announced miserable delivery numbers for Q1. 83 planes down significantly from 130 last year. Feels like there's something new each day with this company. Yeah, Salipour's allegations are pretty not catastrophic for Boeing, but it is interesting to see what he's saying.

9:03The meat of his claims are that crews assembling the plane are failing to fill these tiny gaps of the manufactured parts that you have to put together to create a fuselage. These allegations aren't new. As you mentioned, the FAA has already looked into. They've halted deliveries of Dreamliners while it looked in the gaps. It eventually cleared it once again. But Salipors says he's seen some stuff that the FAA maybe hasn't. This is a quote from him. I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align by jumping up and down your deforming parts. So those holes align temporarily.

9:33But that's not how you build an airplane. That is quite the claim to say that Boeing engineers were literally using their feet to jump up and down to fit the pieces together. But we'll see if that kind of passes up to the muster as he talks to Congress. Yeah, it absolutely is just another blow to the crisis of confidence for Boeing. The 787 has been under the microscope for a while now. It had to halt production for two years at this South Carolina plant. It's also the first plane that Boeing built where they farmed out all of the components to various suppliers across the country. They didn't build it all in house.

10:07So they're getting all these huge components from various companies that are giving it to them. They're assembling it in South Carolina, and it has not worked out perfectly. this plane has had a lot of trouble. For our next Circle Back segment, Tesla has settled the high-profile wrongful death lawsuit brought against the company by the family of a father of two who died in 2018 after crashing into a highway barrier with the autopilot feature switched on. Remember, this was the crash that the National Transportation Safety Board investigated and came to the conclusion in 2020 that Tesla's self-driving system was at least partly to blame for the accident.

10:43It was a high-profile case that put Tesla's tech in the spotlight, especially the way Elon and the company markets it, which has been criticized for making people think it's safe to drive without needing to stay attentive to the road. But right as jury selection and the trial were set to get underway on Monday, a settlement was reached, and now Tesla can avoid airing out any evidence or testimonies that came up during the case. Yeah, this was big that Tesla settled it because this trial would have given the public a view of the tech behind Autopilot, which it certainly does not want to happen.

11:15But there's a Tesla's self-driving tech is really the future of this company. It's not really making that many new cars anymore, which has hammered its valuation over the course of this year. So Elon needs to drum up support and enthusiasm for self-driving tech. One way he did that is saying that they're going to unveil RoboTaxi, which no one really knows what that means. But RoboTaxi, capital R, is coming, will be introduced on August 8th. And that helps Tesla stock a little bit. Because right now, if you look at how Tesla is valued at a company, its automated driving software specifically is valued at more than its auto business.

11:54So it kind of needs to figure this out. So it kind of needs this. And Elon Musk himself has said that their market cap relies 100 % on this automated driving software. So, yes, this case does fit into that larger piece of the puzzle. And Tesla has done well across cases that are similar, where it's faced a case last April where a jury cleared Tesla responsibility for a crash in the previous years. And then in October, it won another case. So it has been winning these autopilot cases, which are, as you said, absolutely key to the future of the company. Now let's circle back to the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February.

12:32Yesterday offered some closure. The company whose train derailed Norfolk Southern agreed to pay$600 million to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from the accident when hazardous chemicals were released into the community, sparking health and environmental concerns. If this settlement is approved by a judge, tens of thousands of people in the area will be eligible for compensation. And the plaintiff's lawyers say this is a big step in putting this traumatic period behind them. Notably, Norfolk Southern did not admit liability or fault as part of the deal. Still, it's a hefty sum that comes on top of more than$1 billion in costs for an accident that has shown a harsh light on safety standards in the rail industry.

13:11Right. This was circling back to this story. Remember, there's that period where it seemed like trains were derailing left and right. This was a big, big disaster. We remember the photos that came out of this were just the massive mushroom crowd of these chemicals burning. And now hopefully that community is getting some closure around it. The National Transportation Safety Board is still conducting that full investigation into it. But it looks like they do think there's this overheating of a wheel train bearing on one of the rail cars that caused it to happen. So still looking into it. But hopefully this community, East Palestine, gets a little closure around that accident.

13:46Our final circle back story takes us to the wide and expansive aisles of Costco, where free samples fall from the sky and gold bars spill from its shelves. That last part is only a slight exaggeration because if you recall, Costco began selling one ounce bars made of nearly pure 24 karat gold online last year. And boy, has it gone well. According to an estimate from Wells Fargo, Costco is selling as much as$200 million worth of gold bars per month right now. at an estimated$2 ,400 a bar based on the current price of gold. That means Costco is moving somewhere in the neighborhood of 83 ,000 bars a month.

14:23My question is, when are they going to start handing out free samples of that deal? That'd be nice to walk into a Costco on Saturday and you're like, all right, there's my taquitos, there's my fish tacos, and oh, I'll take a gold bar. This is very helpful for the top line if you want to boost your revenue numbers. For the bottom line, in terms of profit, this isn't the most high margin business because when someone buys a stick of gold, what is it? A gold bar, you have to ship it. And they're not really charging that much more than the list price for gold. They're just charging 2 % more. And Costco offers all of these cash back opportunities.

14:59So in terms of profit, they're not making a huge profit, but it's accounting for 3 % now of their total general merchandise sales, these gold bars. Yeah, it's definitely a popular time for gold in general. So it's almost a marketing tactic as well, because gold is seen as an inflation head. It's seen as a hedge against uncertainty. And obviously there's a lot of uncertainty in the global economic markets right now. Up next, a spicy trademark battle over the name Chili Crunch. Plus a look into the YouTube empire of Dude Perfect. I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back. And Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL.

15:35I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year. and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

16:01When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Celebrity chef David Chang's Momofuku food empire is being roughed up more than the diners in the menu for its attempt to own the trademark to a condiment. That condiment is Chili Crunch, the oily, garlicky concoction you drizzle on your dumplings, noodles, eggs, goes with everything.

16:47Some mom-and-pop producers of Chili Crunch said they received cease and desist letters from Momofuku telling them to knock it off with that name or face the legal wrath of David Chang's well-resourced machine. Momofuku sells a popular brand of Chili Crunch, and it recently applied with the U.S. Patent Trademark Office for a trademark. In practical terms, it wants to be the only Chili Crunch in town. But it's facing an uproar from the food industry, which says Chili Crunch isn't yours to own. You're literally trying to control a condiment like ketchup, mustard, or mayo. Imagine going into a grocery store and Hot Sauce is a capital H, and there's only one brand that ever sells it.

17:25That is what David Chang is being accused of with Chili Crunch. In response, Momofuku says, it's created a differentiated product from what's out there, and it's doing what any reasonable company would do and protecting its brand. Still, Chang might be the most hated man in food right now. Yeah, it's definitely, it feels like a David versus Goliath story. You never want to be the Goliath here who is hitting down and sending cease and desist letters to what people think is not something that a trademark should be granted for at all. Like you wouldn't trademark ketchup, you wouldn't trademark mayonnaise or anything like that.

17:59So why is David Chang trying to trademark chili crunch? And that is kind of where that has a lot of lawyers confused because David Chang did actually secure the trademark for Chili Crunch. Chili with an E though. Now he's going after Chili with an I. He negotiated getting that Chili with an E deal from another company. And a lot of lawyers are looking at this and saying like, how did that one even get granted in the first place? So it's all this legal gray area. David Chang saying, listen, I'm just trying to create a brand here. We think we've created a unique product, but a lot of people are seeing it differently.

18:31Right. To get a trademark, you need to be you need to have this particular product associated with a single brand. So when I think of Chili Crunch, I should immediately be thinking of Momofuku's Chili Crunch. It should be the only thing I think about. But when you see Chili Crunch or Chili Crisp or any of these wide variety of ways you call it, because it is untranslatable from China and Asia, where it originally come from, it originally came from. You don't really think about who made it. You think, OK, that's what's in the jar. I'm buying Chili Crisp. I went into a Chili Crunch. I went into my refrigerator yesterday because I have a bunch of these bottles.

19:07And I hadn't heard of any of these brands before. I had no affiliation or there's no conception of what particular brand makes this. And I think that's what the argument is, is this is a condiment. It's not a particular product or brand associated with Momofuku. The one thing I can see on David Chang's side here is that some companies have actually defended the rights to call their products something that has become shorthand for an entire category of products. The examples that come to mind are Xerox, Band-Aid, Velcro. Those are brands that have become just, or like Kleenex, for instance, that is a brand of tissue, but you just call them Kleenexes at this point.

19:45So I think David Chang's thinking that maybe if we just exert our might here and we say Chili Crunch is ours, people will start thinking of him. But I think you're right. It's definitely a bit of an uphill battle, and it's also just not a great PR look at it. No, they're calling him a trademark bully. But a lot of so much money is at stake. This category of condiment hot sauce is just booming right now. It is certainly delicious. But the hot sauce industry is at$3 billion, and it's expected to double over the next 10 years. So there's a lot of money at stake, and this branding is so important, and marketing is big in the particular food industry.

20:19If you've been on YouTube any time in the last 15 years, you no doubt have come across a video from a gaggle of guys who specialize in trick shots and call themselves Dude Perfect. If you haven't heard of them, imagine what a group of mid-30s guys who call themselves Dude Perfect might look like, and you've probably nailed it. Dude Perfect is in the news because they just raised$100 million from the private investment firm Highmount Capital. It's part of their goal to move from a one-dimensional 60 million subscriber YouTube channel to a full-fledged media empire, and they're well on their way.

20:54This is Dude Perfect's first raise, but revenue is expected to top$50 million this year, up from$25 million just two years ago. And it currently has a team of 25 people working for the company. Neil, Dude Perfect is one of those groups that is synonymous with YouTube. So it's interesting to see them take the leap and to raise some cash to really try to scale this thing. Yeah, I mean, go back to 2009 and the early days of YouTube. It was just four years old and they did this trick shot, the longest basketball shot ever was it? At the time. At the time, they were undergrads at Texas A &M. They went to Kyle Field, the football field there, and pulled off this trick shot.

21:27It absolutely blew up. And they've just been carrying that momentum since with really smart business plays. I don't think they're one-dimensional on YouTube right now at all. They have their own smoothie at Smoothie King. They have a line of Nerf products. They have their own board game. They've been dabbling and doing things outside of YouTube because I think there's a growing recognition among YouTube creators. We've seen this with Mr. Beast that YouTube has a ceiling. You can only make so much money and you can make a lot of money on YouTube, but it's getting very saturated. And it's time if you have a strong enough brand, which they think they do, it's time to become a fully fledged business and do more in real life activations.

22:02I can't believe I just said the word activations, Jesus. But do more things outside of the YouTube empire if you really want to become a serious company. Right. It's also very interested in global growth. Do Perfect says half of its YouTube audience is international. And I do want to talk about that brand affinity a little bit because High Mount Capitals, their chief investment officer, told Axios that they wanted to and were attracted to the Dude Perfect investment because he literally called out his kids age 5, 8, and 10. They are super fans and that he trusts Dude Perfect. And that trust is something that Dude Perfect knows.

22:34It's cultivated over 15 years. It's a very family-friendly, very approachable brand. And there's not that many just pure family-friendly brands out there. But we have seen the ones that are out there do very well. Coco Melon has done a well. We've talked about Bluey on this show before. So there's clearly this demand for wholesome, kid-friendly, family-friendly fun. And Dude Perfect embodies that to a T. Absolutely. I mean, they also want to build a$100 million theme park in North Texas. Seems fun. It does seem fun. I mean, I don't really follow Dude Perfect. You know, I feel like I would be in the demographic of just, like, shooting hoops, doing weird things, and just overall goofing around with sports.

23:12But, you know, I guess if they open that up, I'll take my I'll go there and maybe take my kids one day. All right. Finally, I want you to imagine this scenario. You walk into a food spot for takeout, but instead of placing an order with a human being behind the counter, you encounter a screen with a woman on Zoom who greets you and asks you what you want to eat. Well, you need not imagine because in New York, this is actually happening. A new restaurant chain with several locations across the city is deploying hostesses from the Philippines on Zoom to help with checkout. These work-from-home cashiers went viral on social media last weekend, prompting many people to ask, is this the plot of a bad back black mirror episode, or is this the future of customer service?