ChatGPT Finds Its Voice While Amazon Invests Billions in AI Rival

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0:42Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe'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. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, Ford CEO made how much last year? We'll talk pay disparities between company execs and the average worker as the auto strike rolls on. Then OpenAI has given ChatGBT a voice now. So be careful what you say around your phone these days because it might start talking back.

1:21It's Tuesday, September 26. Let's ride.

1:28Neil, you were out yesterday for Yom Kippur. The largest part of the holiday is an over 24-hour fast that ended yesterday at sundown. How did you break the fast, and are you going to start taking up intermittent fasting? I'm not going to take up intermittent fasting, but fasting is an interesting exercise because on the one hand, you realize how dependent you are on food. Like a half a day goes by, and all you can think about is when is my next meal? I need to eat food. My whole day is derailed. And then on the other hand, as it gets into the afternoon, you're thinking, I can do this. Like I have the power to get through this.

2:00So it's an interesting duality where you realize how beholden you are to food. And on the other hand, you're like, I have the discipline and I have the ability to get through this entire day. So that's kind of what I was thinking about. I knew you would have a good take on that. My funny Yom Khafer story is my roommate, who's also Jewish, got home yesterday and there was an entire pizza that was accidentally delivered to our apartment. When's the last time you had an entire pizza accidentally delivered, let alone during a 25-hour fast? So it was just a classic case of like, how is this happening right now?

2:32And it was Joe's pizza. Yeah, it was really good. Okay, Neil, let's get into our top story of the day where we have a whole bunch of AI news to parse through. Three stories caught our eye, so we'll run through them quicker than you can say Skynet. Up first, OpenAI announced a very Joaquin Phoenix slash Scarlett Johansson-esque update to ChatGPT yesterday that allows it to respond to your questions with spoken words, meaning that when you yell at your computer for being slow or overheating, it might start yelling back. Well, not really, but the update will make ChatGPT a lot more formidable than the existing voice assistants out there like Siri and Alexa.

3:07While those two only have a very small range of canned responses that they can regurgitate, you can have a full-blown conversation with ChatGPT, much like we've already been doing via text. Also, as if flowing conversation wasn't enough, ChatGPT also says its voice assistants sound a lot more lifelike than the series and Alexas of the world. Plus it has five options for different voices to choose from. Honestly, Neil, as I'm saying this, this feels like one of the biggest AI breakthroughs yet because we've been promised this idea of a sort of smart voice assistant for years, but now it feels like they're actually possible.

3:44Yeah, this is a big breakthrough. I mean, I have an Alexa at home. I have a Google Assistant at home and I barely use them as we've talked about many times on the show because the only use cases for them are something like, you know, can you set a timer for my salmon? And what's the weather outside? And can you play a certain music? So I think being able to converse with ChatGPT and its capabilities is a game changer. And the big thing here, I think, is that you can continue a conversation, have an open-ended conversation, and correct yourself. So if I were to, you know, ask Alexa something and it got it wrong, I would have to ask the same thing again, just in a slightly different way.

4:23Meanwhile, if I'm talking to ChatGPT and anybody who's used ChatGPT, the text version, it remembers your conversation. So you can say, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. Like, go back to TAPS and let's talk about that. And so I think the ability to correct and change as the conversation goes is what makes this so much bigger and better than the existing voice assistants. Yeah, and then also another aspect to the announcement was that they're adding senses to ChatGPT as well. So another sense that they added was you can actually see images that you show it. So a use case that we're definitely not condoning is you could potentially take a picture of your homework, for instance, and then ChatGPT could process that image and then solve it.

5:05So again, it's becoming a full-fledged sensory being at this point because now you can text to it, you can talk to it, and then also it can process images. So it's really rounding into form. One fun thing that someone used the visual ChatGPT for, and this is something that I need because I'm a terrible organizer. They took a picture of a bunch of boxes and then it took a picture of a bunch of their trunk of their car and said, is it possible for me to arrange these boxes in a way that they would fit in the trunk of the car? That's because I'm the worst at organizing. So if I had the chat GPT's, uh, you know, green light to say, yes, you can do, you can fit these boxes in your car.

5:45Then I would do that. Another way people are using this is to take a picture of their fridge. That's what I was going to say. And say, can I make a possible recipe for this? They say the recipes are a little rudimentary, maybe like three stars on all recipes, but it's just another way of showing how ChatGPT is becoming more than just a bot that you can have text conversations with. And it seems like a serious breakthrough. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to start snapping pics in my fridge because I'm hopeless at coming up with the recipes. All right, so tucked into OpenAI's updates also was that it is partnering with Spotify to translate podcasts into different languages.

6:22And here's the kicker, in the host's voice. The feature is currently limited to certain major podcasters and a few languages for now, but Spotify expects to make the option more accessible in the future. I have always wondered what Bill Simmons sounds like when complaining in German, so I'm really excited for this to roll out. Actually, I wonder what we sound like in German. It sure seems like one day you could all listen to this podcast in a different language with our voices. Toby, think about what this could do for our resumes. Conversational German, conversational Spanish, conversational French, and we wouldn't be lying.

6:56Yeah, I honestly would immediately thought about our podcast, obviously, but I got a little nervous, too, because who knows how perfect the translation is and what if it says something that can be misconstrued in another language. So I really do wonder if this will actually become a widely used thing, because there are nuances between languages. And one thing said in one language might not translate. Also, filler words. I know we have some filler words from time to time. Never. Right. What does it do with those? So I have a lot of questions. And Spotify, where was our call, though? We're not in the small test group.

7:29No. I guess right now we're stuck listening to Bill Simmons. But that concern about synthetic voices, which is a big part of OpenAI's tech right now, is majorly concerning. Over the first half of the show, we've been talking about, yeah, this is an amazing breakthrough. But the more options you have to interact with ChatGPT, the more opportunities there are for bad actors to break it. So everyone tries to break ChatGPT from a tech perspective. So they've gotten smart in protecting against harmful information there. But then all of a sudden you start being able to send a pictures. It's able to synthesize voices.

8:05It's able to, you know, see and hear and talk back. And all of that just opens up way more opportunities for this kind of mass information and bad acting that researchers have warned about. Yeah, the can of worms is well and truly opened at this point. All right. For our final AI story, it comes from a name we haven't really mentioned much in the AI race, and that is Amazon. after sitting on the sidelines while its big tech brethren have duked it out. It cannonballed into the water yesterday by announcing it would invest up to$4 billion into the AI startup Anthropic. We've talked a little bit about Anthropic on the show before.

8:42Remember, it's the one with a chatbot named Claude. Claude and ChatGPT are both AI chatbots that can answer questions and create content. But a few differences between the two is that Claude can process larger bodies of text than ChatGPT. Plus, it's a constitutional AI, which means it's governed by a series of rules to prevent it from going all Terminator on us. So, Neil, do we like the move from Amazon or does it feel like it made a bit of a reactionary move to make sure it's not getting left behind in the AI race? The dust is kind of settling now among the big tech companies. We're kind of seeing some of them were kind of playing the field a little bit and seeing how this all would shake out.

9:18But I think there is an extreme arms race right now to kind of hitch your wagon to one particular chatbot or product that can get investor enthusiasm. Amazon did not have that. I mean, it has AWS, which is this massive cloud computing platform. But it doesn't really have this product that it could show off and say, this is how we're working with generative AI right now, which is what investors really want to hear. Microsoft obviously has hitched its wagon to open AI and chat GPT. They invested$10 billion back in January. Facebook has taken this open source approach, so they've kind of staked their claim there.

9:53Apple is another one where it's sort of unclear where their future lies in generative AI, but you know they're working on it. Google has barred, but Amazon was just kind of hanging out there in this liminal space. So maybe it did feel a little bit pressured to prove to investors that it was really going all in on generative AI by saying, Anthropic, like you are the people who started that are former open AI employees. So they were like, all right, this is, we're just going to go in all in on you. I think it's so funny when these announcements are considered investments because a lot of that$4 billion is just going to be plowed right back into AWS because remember these language models take so much computing power.

10:34And so I don't even look at it as an investment. They're basically just giving them 4 billion in in AWS credits because Anthropic will now use AWS to train its system. So I think it's funny. It's always, it's a logistics match made in heaven. And we saw it with Microsoft and opening. Now we have the similar tit for tat on Anthropic and Amazon. Anthropic is two years. It's two years old. Yeah. It started in 2021. Four billion. And they were last minority stake for four billion. Can you imagine? Well, they were last, they've raised one billion so far before this, and they were valued at four billion and they just raised, Well, it's not totally$4 billion yet.

11:09It could be up to$4 billion. So I wonder what this valuation is. No one kind of had it, but I am curious. It's probably worth a lot of money. OK, moving on. The eyes of the country are on Michigan because President Biden is headed there today to picket with striking autoworkers, and his opponent on the Republican side, Donald Trump, will hold a rally with union members tomorrow. We've talked a bunch about the auto strike on this podcast, but there's one dimension we haven't fully explored yet, and that is the issue of CEO pay. United Auto Workers president Sean Fain has made the disparities between the pay of auto company CEOs and the rank and file members the centerpiece of the wage increases he's looking for.

11:48Here's what he's talking about. Last year, Ford's current CEO Jim Farley earned$21 million. That's 21 % more than his predecessor did in 2019. And at General Motors, CEO Mary Barra made$29 million, about 34 % more than she did four years ago. Got those numbers in your head? Okay, let's talk about what regular people are bringing home after a day in the factories. Under their current contract, full-time unionized factory workers start at about$18 an hour and can earn up to$32 an hour. UAW base wages have risen 6 % on average since 2019, but that amounts to a 5.4 % decline when you factor in inflation.

12:27So not only is the UAW arguing that the pay gap between the top CEOs and the average worker is astronomically large, about 300 times, But it's also been increasing over time, and they're currently on strike to try to remedy that. Yeah, and if you compare those pay gaps to other employers with big union workforces, the three automakers' pay ratios were even higher than the railroad industry, the airline industry. But they were actually in line with UPS and Caterpillar, which makes heavy machinery. So it is interesting to see kind of where the auto industry falls in terms of the spectrum of other unionized workforces.

13:04And it's definitely on the higher end as well. So the union has that to bargain with as well. The CEOs say, look, we're massive companies. Right. First of all, they say we're not taking home salaries. These are all the majority of any CEO's compensation nowadays is in stock based awards or grants. So they're saying we have to hit performance metrics to even see any money. And what those performance metrics are is obviously up for debate whether they're easily hit or not. But together, these three companies bring in$150 billion in revenue. So they're like, hey, I take home$20 million. My company brings in tens of billions of dollars each year.

13:45So I'm worth it. It was interesting, too, that CEO pay actually did dip in 2022, according to one report, because the market did decline in 2022. to. And again, a lot of their CEO pay is tied to the market. But then also, if you want to compare CEO pay to another segment of the worker population, which is the 0.1 % of wage earners, the gap between those two kind of groups is actually growing. Back in the 50s through the 80s, the average ratio was 3.6. CEOs were paid 3.6 to 1 more than the top 0.1 % of earners. And now it's at 7.68%. So even the gap between the highest earners and CEOs is widening.

14:30So imagine what it's doing compared to the median worker, which is what we're seeing in these figures. And critics say point to that particular statistic and say that there is a market failure here, because why are there just 30 people who are able to run massive companies in the world? Like, why are they getting so much more than the other elite employees, you know, who are who are in the point one percent? And they're saying that there's a market failure because these the Mary Bars of the world, the Bob Igers, these massive CEOs are railroading corporate boards into these massive compensation packages that don't reflect their value.

15:08So the argument is that say we decrease CEO pay across the board, we won't see a dip in economic output. Right. Market failure. It's markets all the way down, Neil. That's what we like to say. All right, Neil, before we jump into the next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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15:58When 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 all right neil we are back with another edition of toby's trends where i an unhinged and wacky gen z or educate you a millennial with a fully developed prefrontal cortex about a new trend i've had my eye on and that trend is clown core people with clown fears rest easy there's nothing scary about this trend but people who have a fashion sense you might want to shield your ears Clowncore is a fashion movement that's grown in popularity over the last few years and even made it to the runways of Paris Fashion Week yesterday after Italian designer Marni showcased a tennis shoe called the Bigfoot 2.0 that, for lack of a better word, looks like it was stung by a bumblebee.

17:06It's all puffy and inflated, and it looks like someone took a bike pump to your Stan Smiths. Some of you may have first noticed Clowncore gaining a foothold in popular culture after mischief created those big red boots that everyone from doja cat to little nas x were rocking but also if we want to zoom out this is a real business trend as well so-called ugly shoes like crocs reported record revenue in june while birkenstocks is slated to go public later this year at around eight billion dollar valuation so neil should we be rocking clown shoes to the show the thing with fashion is these things pop up for a year and then you go all in on it and then the next year they're are not in vogue anymore, so I just stick to the basics.

17:47I just go with white dad tennis sneakers all the time. But it does seem like these big, clunky, oversized shoes are becoming a huge thing in high fashion. And to me, it's all about just standing out and being nonconformist and subverting typical fashion trends, which are sleeker shoes and seen as more stylish. But I think in fashion, the whole point is standing out and being yourself and expressing yourself in certain ways. And wearing a massive boot or a shoe is a way to do that. Yeah, you definitely got to the sociological region behind it. But if we also look back through fashion history, there is a precedent for this.

18:25Venetian noblewomen were wearing these chunky platform shoes all the way back in the 15th century. And the goal back then was to distance themselves from the dirty streets. And so some of them, though, were 20 inches high. So imagine wearing platform shoes, walking through Venice on 20-inch high platforms. So I guess everything that is new was once old and vice versa. All right, Toby. Thanks for that trend. I don't know how many of us are rocking clunky shoes. You can't see it beneath the table, but I got some clunky ones on right now. OK, moving on. They promised us flying cars and we might just have flying cars.

19:01At a base in California, the U.S. Air Force received its first electric flying taxi yesterday, known in the industry as an e-VTOL, an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft because it can take off and land vertically like a helicopter. The startup that provided the flying taxi to the military is Joby Aviation, one of a handful of startups that are looking to turn the Jetsons into reality. The progress has been slow going, both on the technical side and gaining approval from regulators, that these won't totally screw up already clogged air traffic. But the delivery to the Air Force is a sign that air taxis might finally be inching toward commercial service.

19:38Proponents of air taxis say they could revolutionize urban transportation by providing an emissions-free, ultra-quiet alternative to the private cars and ride-sharing options stuck in traffic down below. I mean, how nice would it be to take the elevator up to your apartment roof and snag an air taxi to work during rush hour? But despite all of the hype, there is not yet a commercial air taxi system anywhere around the world, though many are trying to make it happen, possibly by next year. Yeah, this seems like almost a perfect storm where regulators, the private sector are all kind of aligned into making this a thing.

20:12I mean, the FAA has said it's preparing to support robust air taxi operations by 2028. And then obviously the military has been a big proponent of these. And actually, right now, the FAA does not govern aircraft used by the military. So air taxi companies have kind of used that loophole to secure these big defense contracts so they can start testing out their air taxis on military bases. And there are use cases. I mean, you can obviously transport cargo and people, but you can also use these vehicles to monitor these giant air bases and then also maybe conduct medical evacuation. So there's definitely these use cases on military.

20:51And I can see why they've kind of gravitated towards each other because it's kind of a win-win for both. They're like airborne forklifts. That's the way I'm thinking about it. Or those like little cars that jet around airports all the time that you see. Those could be, that could just be them up in the air. So I don't know if it's a massive, you know, game changer here. But there could be some particular uses just for some specs on these things. They can carry one pilot and four passengers. They can travel as fast as 200 miles per hour. So think about something that can take off and land vertically and travel 200 miles per hour in a forward direction.

21:23And the range is as much as 100 miles. And that is actually the big one of the big hang ups here is that just like we saw we're seeing in electric vehicles, the batteries are a big deal because you need to have more range to be able to make these things useful. And the problem right now is getting a battery that is lightweight, doesn't produce a ton of noise, too, because these things are built as a quiet alternative. Imagine if you're in New York City, which is already loud, and then you add 100 to 200, all these taxis flying up in the air, and that could add to a lot of noise pollution. So there is some technical work needed to make these quieter and have a longer range.

22:01Yeah, I'm more bullish on it on the military-based use case because of the wide open spaces. I'm less bullish on it on cities just because the safety hazards, the noise pollution. So if you wanted where Toby's bullishness factor stands, bullish for military, not bullish for cities. There is a chance that we could see these by 2024 next year at the Paris Olympics. That's the first target that they're trying to aim for commercial service. Oh, Lord. And then by 20, the Olympics seem to be play a big factor in air taxi service because France is trying to get it done by 2024. And then our target date here in the U.S.

22:34for a major fleet is Los Angeles in 2028. All right. Keep an eye out to the skies. OK, Neil, for our final story, I want to talk about some of the unspoken norms of talking on the phone. Now, this could have easily been a Toby trend for how wildly different generations view phone etiquette. The Washington Post wrote this really interesting piece where they talked to an etiquette expert on what exactly is proper phone etiquette these days. And the results were interesting. Here are some of the rules mentioned in the piece. First of all, don't leave a voicemail. They are an artifact of the days before text messages.

23:08If you call someone they don't pick up, just text them after. Speaking of texts, text people before calling because doing it in the reverse can feel a little stressful for the recipient. The next one I found actually helpful just as a rule of thumb, emotions are for voice. Facts are for texts. So that means anything that requires nuance like an argument or catching up with someone is best done on the phone while day-to-day stuff can be handled via text. There are a couple more on this list, Neil, but I know you must have some opinion on these because I certainly do. Okay, I'm excited to hear them, but I just want to just note how quickly voicemails have evaporated from our culture.

23:45Because it was just in 2010 that Bruno Mars said, don't feel like picking up my phone, so leave a message at the tone. So clearly voicemails were a big thing back in 2010, but I have not gotten one in one to two years, and I think that's totally fine. I think don't leave a voicemail I'm on board with. Text before you call is abomination. Oh, you don't like that? No, you should be able to call someone without arranging. This isn't work. If it's work, then maybe I would say like, hey, are you free for a call right now? Or let's schedule a call. But that's work. When you're just calling up a friend, it is not an inconvenience to the friend to just call them.