Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass | E2323

28:41I don't believe that that's actually what's going on here. Right. I think there's something very pragmatic going on here, which is data centers. Correct. Yeah. And data centers are really unpopular. And so if you look at this manifesto, everything about it is abundance. This is Zuckerberg's abundance. Yes. I am on your side. I'm going to empower you. I'm going to make it free manifesto. If you were to sum up all of the points in this memo, it's that your life is going to be better from AI. I'm in your corner. And we're going to be the company that gives you an agent, a tutor, free design tools, and makes your life better.

29:23And we're going to even teach you how to make a small business. The only thing we ask in return is that you let us build some data centers. The team is pumped because you're about to close a massive deal, but then the client's lawyers get involved. What happens if you get hacked? How are we going to protect your data? There's no need to panic. This is why you brought in YSecurity. YSecurity is staffed with over 40 experienced engineers who have actually worked security for world-class companies like Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Robinhood, Brex, and so many others. But the best part is you don't even need to hire YSecurity.

29:58Your company can rent YSecurity's elite team by the hour. That means no massive salaries to pay, no costly consultants, just real experts embedded in your company, helping you out with your SOC 2, ISO 4200, or any security or compliance challenge you're facing. You can even set a monthly cap so you know exactly how much you're spending. And your first six hours are completely free. Head to ysecurity.io slash twist and book your free six-hour strategy call. That's ysecurity.io slash TWIST. At the same time this was happening, this morning, I was listening to Morning Joe. In the morning, I will switch back and forth while I'm having my coffee, CNBC, CNN, Fox, MSN, MSNOW, whatever it's called.

30:47And I'll just zip through a couple of these things just to see what they're talking about. Because there's a really cool feature on YouTube, the quad, where it gives you all four. So I see this piece on Morning Joe about how great Zuckerberg's data center in Utah has been. Play this clip. Kind of engagement, whereas different data center proposals sailed through with hardly any controversy at all. No controversy, Lon. There's no controversy here. What's inside here, Lon? It's a farm. Inside this shipping container is an educator's dream. a hydroponic farm tended by high school students who sell their products at a farmer's market.

31:29Oh, it's for the children. It's salad for children. And they're learning entrepreneurship. How did that happen in Utah? It's good lettuce. It's not bitter? No. The lettuce is not bitter. Courtney Johnson is the former principal of Cedar Valley High School in the city of Evalmount, about 50 miles south of Salt Lake Sea. Calling that city is a little bit of a stress. A hydroponic farm funded by Meta, the parent company of exploring Instagram and one of the country's biggest AI hyperscalers. Back in 2018, when the company announced plans to build this$2 billion data center on the edge of town, Johnson says she went to work.

32:02I started messaging Mark Zuckerberg right then. I'm like, we're a new high school. We're not opened yet, but I want to work with you because I'm all about community partnerships, right? So yeah, they gave me the money and here we have it. And it's awesome. This is exactly what Cuban was saying. A quarter million dollars. Remember that Mark Cuban quote where he was like, just buy the communities off. Just. Corporate largesse that didn't end there in this old rodeo. Here we go. So they got a quarter million dollars for the farm. Ninth fastest growing city in the nation. Ninth fastest growing city.

32:34Literal cowboy. And also the mayor. So anyway, I think you get the idea. The mayor is stumping for it. And this was a data center built in 2018 in Utah, the same place where Kevin O 'Leary is doing his data center. So MS Now, which this felt like a commercial for Meta for me, like with the background music and everything. Yeah, I mean, you know, these are big corporations behind MS Now. They're not against data centers. So it probably is kind of. I mean, I don't know who owns MS Now now, but I'm not sure who the corporate interest here is, but it did seem to me. They split off, right? It's Versant Media Group.

33:12That's the company that split off from NBC last year to run all of their cable networks. So it's not part of NBC anymore. It's no longer part of Comcast. It was Comcast. Now they're their own company called Versant Media. And they own CNBC. So not to be like crazy conspiracy theorist here. But now you've got mainstream media saying, hey, you got it all wrong on data centers. The same day his manifesto drops. This is a full-on, full-court press, let us build data centers. We need to build data centers. It's going to be great for your community. You're going to get hydroponic farms. We're going to put in a new stadium.

33:50They even have in this little love letter to Meta that they started a soda pop store at the high school where you have these Italian delicious sodas from the pumps. And I was like, okay, we know what's going on here. This is a absolutely constructed, and I hate to do the media deconstruction here. There is a PR group for Meta that says, how do we, how can we turn the narrative on data centers around? Because we need to build more data centers. We need to catch up here. How can we do that? Let's talk about, hey, you're not going to lose your job. Check. We're going to give you a bunch of free software.

34:31Check. The world's going to be safer. You're not going to have terrorist attacks. You're going to have your own tutor for your child, your small business. We're going to give you software for that. And if you just learn how to use these tools, we're going to make them free for you for life. We're the group that's going to make super intelligence available for all people for free. All we ask is that you let us just build some data centers. Yeah, it's a direct response to the big criticism, which is always like, well, these data centers are coming in. They're sucking up all the water. They're using up all the power.

35:02And then what do we get out of it? They don't create that many jobs. It's funneling all this money to, you know, the billionaire class, the Epstein class. Like, I feel like that's the narrative. So this is trying to cut directly at the heart of that. Like, no, actually, here are all the things that you're going to get out of this data center being in your neighborhood. You're going to get a free tutor now. I got to say it. whatever PR firm, marketing comms firm, they gave$10 million to run this campaign and playbook, they should have given them 20 million. It's a good idea. Because it's working.

35:36This was done so well that MS Now hit his manifesto. It makes you feel great about AI again. Whereas Dario and Sam Altman saying, we got to come up with UBI. And like, this is half of all jobs are going away. That narrative scared everybody to death. And of course you don't want data centers. The data centers are going to wind up in hacking and nuclear bombs and dirty bombs and bioweapons. My iPhoto is going to get hacked. My iMessages are going to get hacked. My computer is going to be hacked. And we're going to have dirty water and my electrical bill is going up. F this. Yeah. Now we're just going to turn the whole narrative around.

36:17Well done to the PR marketing team at Meta. And I think actually it's a well-written manifesto. It was not written by AI. It was definitely not written by a, I don't think it was written by Mark Zuckerberg. I think it was written by some professionals who came in and, and, and polished this because I agree with you. It's very compelling and it's well written. I feel it's his ideas though. He may have had somebody co-write it with him, but I think to my point earlier, I think he's taking control of the message. I think he actually believes what he's saying here. Interesting. So I think there's definitely ways to read it as, as cynical, but yeah, it definitely is.

36:49What's the most cynical take you'll take it? Cause I just gave, I think it's actually how he feels. I think it's actually the direction he's going in. It's good for his business. And I think the most cynical thing I can say is he wants to install data centers and he just wants to explain to people what they're going to get out of it. And it felt pretty even keeled. Yeah, I think that's the most cynical take is that this is really like a large scale advertisement for like Meta's agents. Like, hey, we're building all this stuff that you're going to love and it's going to help you and it's going to be built into the apps that you already have.

37:20And he's presenting it as I'm doing a public good. It's a public service intelligence for everyone. But he's really just promoting the new agent coming to your phone via meta. I feel like that's the most cynical take. I don't know. But I mean, if that's the most cynical take. And they're dropping open source models today. They dropped Muse Glimmer. Yes. And Muse Spark 1.2. It's coming. And he's going to do an open weight version of Muse Spark 1.2. you know the fact that he's releasing open source is proof in the pudding you know so I I look at like I'm looking at it trying to be cynical and I don't find myself getting too cynical I kind of believe him and with me and I think this is the best version of Zuckerberg I'll say very clearly this is the best version of Zuckerberg I've seen in his career now like my view on his career is irrelevant but I have seen it from the beginning and I think this is the most thoughtful approach I've seen him ever take.

38:21And he is thinking about the ramifications of what he builds for the first time in the history of the company. I think they did not, and they said they didn't, move fast, break things. All we have to do is grow the stock price. All we have to do is grow the user base. Don't worry if we break things. Now, this seems like, hey, here are the things that can break. And then here are the things that could break in your favor as a consumer. We're going to work on not breaking things and we're going to break the arc of history and this technology to you. It is a masterclass. Let me just say this to Zuckerberg.

38:57This is a masterclass of a manifesto. I give him 10 of 10, no notes. Yeah, it is. It takes a techno optimist sort of view, which I don't think you couldn't really say a lot of meta releases in the past felt that way. It usually feels like I'm going to get you super addicted to this feed. that's going to make you feel fat and ugly. Like that's what the Instagram sort of pitch is in a weird way. Like doom, you're going to doom scroll this all day and you won't be able to quit. Whereas this, I think at least we're starting from a more utopian vision of this is going to empower everyday people. Yes.

39:32Yeah. I don't think anybody feels particularly empowered by Instagram. Maybe influencers, but other than them. So X has discontinued their revenue sharing program. The Everything Apps RevShare program, as it existed before, will be retired on September 7th. They're already done accepting new signups in its place. They are introducing the Original Content Rewards program. New payouts will be based on qualified impressions generated by your original content. Now, this includes posts, blog posts, videos, streams, and so forth, but it applies only to, and I'm quoting, content you have personally created, written, filmed, designed, or produced that reflects your own voice, perspective, and expertise.

40:16Love it. So the clear thing they're cutting down on, repose, aggregation, people clipping a second off somebody else's content and then posting a one or two word response, they're going to start cutting that or cutting revenue going to that, de-emphasizing that in favor of all original content posts. To be eligible for the original content rewards, you must subscribe to X. You've got to be at least 18. You have to have at least 500 verified followers and you have to get 500 ,000 verified home timeline impressions. That doesn't include replies, just people going to your actual profile over the last 90 days.

40:53Now, the old revenue sharing number required 5 million home timeline impressions. So this cuts that down. But I did notice there are a lot of people like me who were eligible, got grandfathered in under the old X, where it was easier to get to 500 ,000 timeline impressions. And now they're not going to be eligible. I'm not eligible for the new rewards program. I was eligible for the old one. So we're sort of changing up the dynamic of the people who are going to be eligible for payouts. It's going to be mostly like bigger accounts. So I guess the big question would be, how do you think this is going to reshape X content?

41:30And what are the kinds of things on X you'd like to see less of in your timeline that you're hoping this cuts down on. This is absolutely fantastic because I was never a fan of like Mario and Kane Koa and all these folks who were just stealing other people's content. A lot of them were offshore, stealing other people's content. And it just was a disaster. They were making large amounts of money off of other people's content. And I know the former head of product who just retired. Nikita Beer. Nikita Beer. He was calling people out on this. And to change the actual incentive is a great idea. We want original content there.

42:19Now, I think they just wanted any content when Elon took it over. And it was like, hey, we're going to revenue share. It did get people excited. And those people then went and got too excited. Yeah. To the point at which episode of All In drops, episode of Joe Rogan drops, they would just camp on the feed, make 20 clips, present them, and get these massive amounts. And I'm assuming they would earn tens of thousands of dollars in revenue per month. Now, that was good for the platform in one way because that content found its way onto X in video. although it was coming in either a quasi fair use but generally illegal way these were not the owners of the content clipping is kind of allowed for commentary but systematic clipping is not right and so what this does is this very thoughtfully gets rid of the systematic clippers and just says hey you can clip stuff you can you want to clip you know something from joe Rogan or Tim Dillon, go at it.

43:27Yeah. But you're not going to be making money off of it. Right. You can't monetize it. It's going to cut down on the repetitiveness in the feed. Like when a piece of video would really blow up. I actually referenced it in the last, that meme about the casino butter. I don't know if you've seen it. The woman is making the table side steak on a stone. Anyway, when a clip would go viral like that one, you'd see it over and over and over and over again because everybody was trying to clip it, get people to reshare it on their feed, and then earn the payout. So if this cuts down on just that alone, it's going to make my feed a lot better, I think.

44:00And you have to get to your homepage, like your profile page. Yeah, yeah, in 90 days. So when you sign up, they look at the last 90 days. And if you got half a million original impressions to your timeline, your home page, you're eligible. Somebody clicked on at Jason. Exactly. And if you didn't, you're not eligible. So I got through somehow in the old X because I just had enough followers or whatever. So I was eligible for the old version of RevShare. But now under the new version, I don't get enough impressions on my profile, which is okay. I'm not on X to make money. So it's fine. No, I didn't need payouts.

44:42I appreciate the money. Um, so for me, it's not going to make a big impact, but I do think it's going to reshuffle a lot of the kinds of accounts that you're seeing as much in your for you. Cause it realigns the incentives almost. I like it. Um, I think it's great. Uh, I don't know if I'll qualify it. Um, you will, I have you for sure. I don't know. I don't know about how many people visit my homepage or not. What I do know is this has been a crazy amount of money, um, that I never anticipated. I think, let me see here. Can you see my screen? Wow. That's crazy. That, that, that is a crazy amount of that's over.

45:19But it's very variable. That's over 150 K so far in revenue share on X. But this, yeah, the last two cycles, I guess they do it in two week cycles were 8 ,000. Then the two before that were 2000, the two before that were six and five. Mine's very variable. I mean, it's very variable. Some months I'll get nothing and some months I'll get$500. So it is very variable I think for everybody. But here's the other thing. I think you do want to avoid a situation where it's impossible to climb into those ranks. And I think you don't want to centralize too much of the visibility on just like very large accounts that have millions of people looking at them.

45:56You want people to be upwardly mobile on X. I think that's the idea. Like you want – if I come on there and I make five great posts, I should be able to like build a following. Like that's what the magic of it was. You had a lot of like Shaq joins and a million people follow him overnight because he's Shaq. But then there was also like all like Tree Bro. You remember that guy? Like, like Wint, like all these random accounts where they're just they're really good at posting. And so they got famous for being good at posting. I don't you don't want to lose those people. I think this will incentivize the right kind of people.

46:32This is a more YouTube creator program like your program. So, I mean, go for it. The last one was too much of these, you know, Breaking 911, Wall Street apes. I'm looking at Wokeness. It was very gameable. Doge designer who is good, I guess. Disclosed TV. It pays off those people that influencers who have like a narrative. Like every day I'm going to talk about like end wokeness is a great example of like every day I'm going to post this kind of stuff. All of it individually is going to be the kinds of videos that get a lot of attention. But in the in the aggregate, it's like I'm telling a story and I could just hit that beat five times a day.

47:14Yeah. You know, I am very tired of King Koa, Mario, Weisgard, Breaking 9-1-1, Wall Street Apes. I'm looking at all these people in my feed who are just, oh, it's just. Yeah, it's not for me. And I like this change. And I like the idea that the people who actually make the original content will make the money. and then hopefully they put it back into it. So whether it's Nick Shirley or like there's a guy I gave a hundred bucks to today with X money, this guy JJ, who just reports on crime in San Francisco. And I always thought this guy served a big purpose because the mayors are like, oh my God, don't retweet them.

47:57Like I had one of the mayors of one of these cities literally reach out to me and say, you're not helping by retweeting this guy. And I'm like, bro, I don't live there anymore. number one. Number two, that's your problem that you can't get the Honduran fentanyl dealers off the streets who've been there for 20 years selling fentanyl. Is this the one you shared today? Make it stop. Where it's the guy selling steaks? It looks like it's steaks and sneakers they're selling. I didn't see any fentanyl. Okay, yes. And when I saw that, I gave this guy a hundred bucks. This is JJ Smith. And so what's happening here?

48:31You're like, hey, they're selling steaks. They're selling deodorant. They've got all these things. What they're doing is they're going to small businesses and even larger businesses. And these addicts go. And there's also gangs that do this. They just steal a bunch of stuff. They go to Market Street. They lay it out. And they say, make me an offer for four bucks, five bucks, six bucks, whatever it is. But it is institutionalized. And tech workers, rich people, think they're helping them by buying this stuff because they think, oh, these are like entrepreneurs. No, they're literally gangs that have coordinated this.

49:08How did the gangs work? They did an incredible expose on this because the feds, long before Trump came in and broke this down, there were a group of gangs. They would go to people who were addicted to fentanyl. They'd say, here's what we're looking for. They show them the pictures. We need razors. We need deodorant. We need this. The stuff that you can easily resell. They'd say, go bring it to us. $1,$2,$3. Whatever you grab and run out of there with, we'll give you$1,$2,$3. They go, they grab a bunch of stuff, they leave, they get cash. They would take that stuff, not sell it there. They would take it to warehouses in Oakland.

49:46Then they would drive trucks down to LA, San Diego, Laguna, Riverside, Inland Empire, all those places. And then they would resell it to bodegas there, like small mom and pop shops. And they say, hey, instead of buying stuff, we can get it here for$2 for a deodorant. You sell it for four. Hey, we all win. The way they beat, the way they caught them was all of these companies started finding their deodorant that was labeled for San Francisco with the serial numbers in San Diego. And I'm like, wait a second. Hang on. They figured it all out. Wait a second. So anyway, I like this idea of also donating money to people.

50:27So I've been doing this thing on my X money is out. Did you get X money? Well, I had to because somebody gave me$4.20. And so I had to sign up in order to say it was you. But also X gives you like 15 bucks. They seed the pot a little bit so that you want to sign up to get your money. Here's my account. I am on X. Everybody's sending me 69 cents, 420, et cetera. I guess the green is when they give it to me. Yes. And then as you can see, the black here is me giving it to other people. So I've been trying to give this money away as fast as possible to people. And then people keep this lunatic sent me$420.

51:02And I was like, don't do that. But then I just gave it away to other people. So now I'm running a multi-level marketing scam on my ex account where people sent me 69 and I sent him for 20. But yeah, pretty funny. Good stuff happening. All right. I mean, my only thought on that is like, that's been a part of big cities since I started living in them. Like people on the street, like it used to be bootleg movies in LA where people would go record the screen and then put it on a disc and then sell you the new movie on the street. That was also the mob, by the way. Oh, of course. That was like either, yeah, they would, when I lived in Brooklyn, it was the actual mob.

51:39I think it went to other criminal enterprises. They do it. Then they find fences to go sell it on the street. Yeah. I'm sure it was organized crime in some way, shape or form, of course. Oh, well, they basically took the DVDs and said sell these and bring them. Even back in Goodfellas days, they're selling the bootleg cigarettes out the back of the truck. Anyway, let's move on. Let's move off a truck. Yeah. We've got to talk about the Clarity Act. It's facing another big setback, Senate Republicans. This is, of course, the crypto regulation legislation that we've been working on for forever. Senate Republicans did not take up the bill before leaving for their August recess.

52:15That means it's not going to get debated until September at the earliest, which is going to put the debate about it right ahead of November midterms. And there is a sense among Republicans, for whatever reason, we can discuss maybe why we think this. They don't want to dig into this right before everybody goes to the polls in November to vote. Here's North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis. I do think the odds drop precipitously of this getting passed. He means we leave for a month. We come back. We've got an election ahead of us. I think it gets difficult to get it done. So the bill, just to go over a quick overview, backed by the majority of the crypto industry, Coinbase was sort of not sure they were in.

52:52They're back in now. They're supporting it. It provides a legal framework and jurisdictional certainty for crypto companies. Basically, decentralized digital communities go to the CFTC and fundraising and investment contracts go to the SEC. And it resolves some basic things about, you know, like can a digital asset, can digital asset service providers offer interest or yields or rewards for your stablecoin balance? And those kinds of debates would get discussed. The one real sticking point back and forth that they're still arguing, Dems want to include an ethics provision addressing government officials with ties to the crypto industry.

53:27You can sort of imagine why Republicans are not as enthusiastic about doing that. So, I mean, in your from Melania coin. Yeah, I think I think that. How's your Melania coin holding up? That's obviously what Dems want to do is they want to use this as an opportunity to point out Trump and all of his various connections and how much money he's been making from all of these crypto projects. And Republicans feel like, especially ahead of the midterms, that's not maybe the conversation they want to be having. So what do you think looking at the facts of the ground? I mean, is is this legislation probably dead?

53:59And what impact would that have? I mean, this was kind of a signature Trump effort. You know, we're going to we're going to pass all these crypto regulations. I think it's going to pass right after the elections, probably, if this is getting blocked, because there's so many donors in the crypto space. So, you know, there's money in politics. I hate to let people know, but there's gambling at this establishment. What's that line from Casa Blanca? I'm shocked. I am shocked to find that there is gambling in this establishment. And they're like, sir, you're winning. He's like, thank you. And he puts it in his pocket.

54:35You know, they're just, all of our government officials have been bought and paid for for years over this legislation. One of the big donors to both Republicans and Democrats has been the crypto industry. They have used their influence and their balance sheets to buy this legislation. And buy it, they shall. They will get it right after the midterms. It's probably just a bump in the road. The thing I care about is how does this work in terms of raising money? Now, the SEC is going to keep jurisdiction over the fundraising, like initial token fundraising, investment contracts, while the CFTC is going to take over once the network is mature and decentralized enough to trade as a digital commodity.

55:27I don't understand that part of this. And, you know, how does it work for a startup? So if I start a company and I say I'm going to sell a thousand membership NFTs to it for a hundred dollars each, and then you're going to get, you're each going to get 1 % of the revenue for the first year or whatever, you know, like, what am I allowed to do here? And there's going to be some new offering exemption, and it's going to have a dollar cap. So it's going to cap sales at$75 million over a 12-month period and require issuers to file an offering statement. And then some other update to it was let issuers raise the greater of$50 million a year for four years or 10 % of outstanding ancillary assets capped at$200 million aggregate.

56:22with tailored disclosures and full registration. So you're going to have to register with the SEC. Anyway, this seems like chaos. And I am very interested in the impact it will have on startups. Like what will startups be able to do in terms of fundraising? Because we did have a number of our startups decide, I'm going to do an ICO. And we were like, is that legal? And they're like, we don't know. But we're going to do it in Panama with a foundation. And it's a million dollars to set up the legal entity. and we're raising 10 million. And I'm like, I've never heard of starting an LLC or a C corporation costing a million dollars.

57:00And I've never heard of domiciling it in Panama with a hidden board of directors because the board of directors doesn't have security concerns. Like when I heard this pitch, I was like, you know what? I can't be on the board of this company. I need you to buy me. I literally told the founder, like, once you go to Panama and start an organization with an anonymous board of directors in an organization that I'm an investor in, time for me to go. I am not going, I got three daughters. I got a family. Like I can't go to jail. I can't go to like prison. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. What are we doing here?

57:37Like, why are we? And I asked the woman who was the attorney pitching us on this foundation. Like, why does it cost a million dollars when you could go on to like, you know, any website if, you know, and sign up to get your incorporation for under$1 ,000? And she's like, oh, well, it's very complicated and not many people have done it. And I'm like, got it. Why haven't a lot of people done this? Hmm. Hmm. Because it's illegal or sketchy? I think it was just pure sketch. But that's something I would like to have somebody who's in this explain to us. So if we can put that on our producer, Jacob, our list of potential topics in a future episode, if there's an attorney who understands how this will affect fundraising for startups, I'd love to hear it.

58:22Claude gave me a little bit of a tip. If you're day one of your crypto startup, you're presumably under the SEC. So if you're launching a token where your team still controls upgrades, treasury, a large chunk of the supply, you're an investment contract asset issuer. All of the usual securities and fundraising rules of the SEC apply. So that's... Okay, so no change. Yeah, so no change there. We could certainly go deeper with more of an expert than me. But what if we launch a token? You know, your startup launches a token after it raises its$50 ,000 startup fee. Secondary trading changes the picture fast.

58:58Once your token is resold by someone other than you or your agent, it stops counting as a security for that transaction. So exchange listings and liquidity events matter a lot more to your regulatory posture. So if I get listed on Coinbase or Kraken and somebody else is selling it, then I'm out of the woods. Correct. But that requires those people to be the gatekeepers then? Yeah. Okay. Claude even says real uncertainty remains. It still requires - Claude's like, I don't want to touch this. Yeah, Claude's like, sorry, bro. My name's Claude. Leave me off the pod. Talk to the Panama legal lady. She'll help you out.

59:37She'll set you up good. Yeah, even Claude, I've never seen that before. Even Claude is like, listen, don't, don't, I don't know. I don't want to deal with this. Claude went like this. Yeah, it's true. So good job, Claude. Thanks for having me. Yeah. That's the hands up, tilt your head. I don't know what that meme is called, but I can picture the guy doing it. It's the guy who is the black guy who does like his own talk show where he rates people. They come in and they like, he's sitting in a king chair. Wait, is it, is it Drewski? Is that the guy in that meme? I think it's Drewski. Yes, that's the guy.

1:00:13I think it's a Drewski, like. You're right. No, you're right. It is. I never, I did not make that formal connection, but you're right. It is Drewski in that meme now. What's that meme called? Let me, let me look up the Drewski, Drewski shrug meme. I mean, it could be just the Drewski shrug. Let's see. Drewski, yeah, Drewski shrug. I don't know. or the Drewski hands up meme seems to be what people are trying to do. Here it is. That's it. And you see that. Yeah. That was just what Claude did. Claude's like, you're on your own. Yeah, I don't know. Son, you're on your own. You want to do a crypto?

1:00:48Have Kyle Simani on your show. I don't know. Yeah, I'll figure it out for you. I'm good. All right. Sorry, sorry, Claude. I didn't mean to stump you on that. We're calling Claude out. You want to do one more story? We got some time. Yeah, keep going. So according to the New York Times, AI agents are helping college students cheat en masse. A new report released on Monday claims that AI is routinely undermining online education. Professors are unable to counter AI-enabled cheating. This is mainly happening, Jason, on courses that they call asynchronous. That means students aren't interacting in real time with their professors or their classmates.

1:01:24Even over video or Zoom, they're watching pre-recorded lectures. Apparently, with modern AI agents being so advanced now, students can literally give them instructions like log in, complete all of my coursework, and the agents will watch the videos, take their tests for them, write their papers for them, even chat with the classmates and fake it about their reading assignments. And several professors interviewed for the article described totally not knowing what's going on with their students and believing that they're spending a lot of time interacting with bots. Here's a community college teacher named Catherine Kaisar.

1:02:00It's just so obvious. Those of us who have been teaching for a long time and are editors and writers can usually recognize the cheaply written AI stuff within 30 seconds, is what she had to say. What is the answer? I'm trying to take the Zuckerberg approach here. Is the answer to this just not have these kinds of asynchronous classes anymore because it's too easy to cheat? Yes, that is the answer. There was a professor and Paul Graham retweeted. I remember this. And I think we talked about it, so we'll find that real quick here. And it was very clear to him that people had cheated with AI. So he did the final in person.

1:02:41When he decided to do this, and it might have been Princeton students or whatever, but everybody's cheating. It was Brown University. I found the tweet. Okay, so here we go. You look at this. There's a couple of things that happened. and I was talking to my nephews and they were telling me about college and cheating and everything. They said during COVID, people made lectures. And one of my nephews was taking a course and he's like, I dropped the course, Uncle J. Cal, because the teacher didn't even teach. He just said, watch the video. And then we asked questions, they sink. And I was like, wait, what are you talking about?

1:03:20He's like, oh, they made their entire lectures and recorded them during COVID. and now you're just taking like a, and I'm like, what? You're just basically going to YouTube and taking a course. I was like, exactly. I'm like, well, why are you paying for that? And they're like, I dropped it because you have a moral obligation to at least teach the class. I mean, my Lord, this is just so unethical. And if you look at this - So this distribution you're looking at, the one side is showing them taking the test using AI and then he had them come in. So the midterm they took using AI, asynchronous at home.

1:03:56And then the final, they had to come in and sit in front of him and actually take it in person. And so you're looking at when these huge gaps are appearing, where somebody clearly did incredibly well with the AI version of the midterm, and then they did very poorly with the in-person exam. The indication is they were cheating using AI. And you can see how few of these students have numbers that are close together. Like their at-home performance matched their performance in the classroom. Presumably, those are the kids who are teaching. So for those of you watching, the number on the right is the midterm, which was done asynchronously, as you said.

1:04:35And if you go to the top, you'll see there's the person, student number one, got a 95.5 at home and a 95 in person. In other words, half a point difference. Yeah. And then it just starts expanding and expanding until you get to student number 22 who got a 59 at home and a 55 there. In other words, they are not the brightest kid in the class, but they didn't cheat. They're doing their own work, yeah. Yeah, and that's the one you want to hire. Right there, that's the person. That's the person who could become Captain America. Remember Captain America? There's a great scene. I just rewatched Captain America, or at least the first half of it.

1:05:15The first Avenger. Yeah. And the first one, the guy who's choosing who's going to get the serum. Yes. He takes a grenade during training camp. He clicks it. He throws it on the ground, says grenade. Everybody runs except Captain America. Four. Dives on top of it. Captain America. Steve Rogers. Yeah. Steve Rogers, who is all of like 90 pounds at this point, jumps on the ground, grabs the grenade, and then makes another pump to like hold it in tighter. and it's a fake grenade it's the greatest scene ever yes any movie stanley tucci dr abraham erskine he's the he's the researcher it's the other guy from the fugitive here oh tommy lee jones yeah tommy lee jones is the one who comes up with the test he says grenade and here they are they all dive and one guy steve rogers that's my guy and then he does a second pump get away yeah Just to make sure there's no shrapnel on anybody else.

1:06:17And then everybody realizes, oh, there's one person true of heart. And that's why he can pick up Thor's hammer. That's right. That's like he's deserving of the Captain America serum instead of all the already powerful, strong soldier guys. Exactly. But remember, they said, Thor said nobody can pick up this except you're pure of heart. Thor's hammer. He has to be worthy. The only person. You have to be worthy of the Ol 'nir. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's worthy of it. Um, that's that 59. That's that one student there. The bottom three, by the way, who got zero on the final, they dropped the class. They didn't even drive.

1:06:51As soon as they realized they were going to get to use their AI, they were like, I got a hundred. I'm done. And a zero. They were, they were out. Yeah. Those are the people who you expel. Those people, you, those people could work in, um, business development. Maybe there's something they could do. There's, there's a job for them. I don't know what it is, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do, you know, we've had a lot of people who make AI tutoring and education apps and there's always all this sincerity. Like there are definite ways to use this to learn and expand your horizons. I've learned a lot from interacting with AI bots, but it is you do have to bring that desire to learn to it.

1:07:34You can use it very lazily. Just give me the answer. You have to like bring that with you that I have desire to iterate and keep using this until I actually learn the material yourself. The only thing you really need to know is that you're only cheating yourself and everybody's cheating in school and the blue books have to come out. Everything needs to be in person. Pop quizzes, reading books in person. I literally went through this with my daughters this summer. they had to read a book. And I said, here's how we're going to do it. I bought like two copies of the book. I said, these are workbooks.

1:08:11They only cost like four or five bucks. I lied to them. And I said, it's okay because they ethically didn't want to write up the books. Sure, I get it. But these were like paperbacks. And I was like, girls, these are paperback workbooks. You circle any word you don't know. And I want you to underline the most important sentence on every page in your estimation. And at the end of the chapter, I want you to write a summary in the book of it. And now we read the book. Now retention's gone over. And we call this hand thinking or hand speed. I talked about it on a previous episode. Hand mind. Hand mind.

1:08:46Hand mind. You borrowed it from Ursula K. Le Guin. Yeah. So hand mind is your mind is going only as fast as your mind, which is why when I'm sitting here on the podcast, this book is here. Because I like to slowly write one word. Like I wrote one word, Jason bot while we were talking. And I said, you know, we should have a bot on Twitter that goes through the show in real time. Like we were having our real time commenter and just Jason bot says what we're talking about or post quotes in real time. So if you weren't watching the show, you could just hear quotes from there. Um, and good work. I won't forget it.

1:09:23So there you have it folks. Anything else on the docket we should do lightning round? Uh, yeah, well I do, I want to mention, we'll do one more story, but before we get to that, one thing I do want to talk about just so we can clip it and share it with everybody. We are hiring for the podcast. We are. We have many open positions. There's three that I want to talk about for our purposes on this show. One, we are looking for a new podcast and video editor. You can go to careers.launch.co, by the way, and look up all of these. That's where you can find all of our job postings. But this one, you can also just email editor at launch or killer editor at launch.co and apply to this directly if you don't want to mess around with the website.

1:10:04So these are people who are going to help us make not just the podcast itself, but make all kinds of great content for all kinds of platforms based on the stuff that we're making for the show. Clip it and put it in TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. We want to be where everybody is. So that's the podcast video editor. We are also looking for both a senior podcast producer. This is somebody with three to five years established experience making great high level podcasts like this one. And then we also want a more junior podcast producer. Maybe you're not as experienced, but you're a great writer, a great researcher, and you're very enthusiastic about AI tech startups.

1:10:44You want to learn this world hands on. I mean, you want to set up amazing interviews like we had today with Const from BitTensor. you're a more junior level person. That's okay. We want to work with you. But you want to learn. But you want to learn. You've got that energy. Yes. A passion for what we're doing and an interest. I mean, I think when we've interviewed for this position before, I tend to get a lot of people who are experienced veterans at podcasting, but they're maybe not as passionate about what we talk about. The tech, the AI, computers, startups being you know being a founder uh you know and if you're if you're not interested somewhat in that stuff this job might be a little bit of a drag we're looking for people who are really they want to learn everything there is to know about starting a company ai being in tech that that's who we're really seeking i mean if we were forced to start a podcast about like poetry like maybe we wouldn't wake well maybe we would i don't know but you we ideally want somebody with a passion for the subject material and who love the technical aspects of the job.

1:11:49This way you're in your sweet spot and you enjoy it. Exactly. So for the producer jobs, you can write us at greatproducer or just producer at launch.co or go to careers.launch.co and find all of the job postings. We'd love to hear from you. I like when people just email us and just say like, hey, here's what I've done. Here's a link to our LinkedIn and get going from there. I wrote a tweet and I wrote, please send us a resume and a cover letter. And people made fun of me because that's not what you do anymore. OK, boomer. Exactly. OK, boomer. A cover letter. It did sound a little antiquated. So I've updated.

1:12:26Yeah, it's a bit antiquated. But, you know, listen, it is what it is. We need more people because AI is replacing everybody's jobs. But our business keeps growing and we need more people. Too many sponsors. We sold out the entire year again. We've got this week in AI. We've got plans to do more. And we're looking for more people. So help us out. AI still can't do all of my job. A little bit. Not all of it, though. All right. One more thing I wanted to talk about before we let everybody go. The second it can. Yeah. Please. The second it can. Please. I'm begging you. Let AI do my job. I get some sleep.

1:12:58I go back to Italy. I'm exhausted. So the last thing, Spotify. Did you hear about this? They're testing a skip button for their previous subscriber, their premium subscriber, Jason. The button will controversially allow premium users to skip through sections of their favorite podcasts, including the ads, the publisher sold ads. But Spotify is exempting their own ads. So you can't use it to skip through an ad that Spotify sold. But you could use it to skip through like all of the ads that we're putting on our podcast that we're not selling through Spotify because we have our old ad team. So Spotify is saying this is just an expansion of the 15-second skip-ahead button, which already exists and which people can already use to bypass their ads.

1:13:41And they argue that, hey, if you make podcasts, this is good news for you because listeners are going to be more engaged with podcast content. And their studies show that this keeps people listening to podcasts for a longer time. Still a lot of blowback out there. Tommy Vitor of Crooked Media said, very cool of Spotify to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner. Yeah, they're going to back down on this one. I'm going to text somebody I know over there who may or may not be in charge. Please. Yeah, this is just dumb. It's dumb. There's already fast forward 10 seconds, right? Like this in every podcast.

1:14:21You could hit the button and it'll jump 15 seconds. People are already using that to skip the ads. Yeah, and you know what? I listen to the ads in these podcasts because the amount of time it takes to take my phone out and hit skip, I'm just like, okay, you know, like I must listen to the ads. And you're listening on one and a half speed anyway, just enjoy the ads folks. And it pays for it and keeps it free. But for the platforms, like this is a big way to build up resentment. And these platforms need to respect the podcasting standards. And this is one of the things I've been telling them over and over again, stop breaking the standards, work with the standards, work with Adam Curry, work on podcasting 2.0.

1:14:56There's two features in podcasting 2.0 that Spotify absolutely and Apple must respect and use. One is a donate button. The donate button should be set in the RSS feed and it should take you directly to whatever the preferred donation is. So if I want to use PayPal, you want to use Stripe, somebody else wants to use Patreon, just let them have their goddamn button. Okay. And then number two, when we go live, let us drop a live into our RSS feed. You will get that and ping it and then send an alert on our behalves. YouTube does that. Now, if Spotify doesn't want to keep losing to YouTube, which is where people are starting to watch podcasts and where podcasts are spending more time, don't do things like this.

1:15:38Spotify should be in the corner of podcasters and for open standards because YouTube is a black box. YouTube doesn't do any of the standards. They don't use RSS feed. all that kind of stuff. And, you know, where are we going to spend our time is what they need to ask themselves. Because the difference between using Spotify and YouTube and putting it in your pocket and listening to the background, is there a difference? It's getting pretty negligible. I mean, I think my biggest concern with the whole podcasting ecosystem is that it feels like increasingly we're centralizing it in just a few platforms.

1:16:10Podcasting used to be like, you could get a show wherever you wanted. It was going out on this feed. You could pick it up from an independent service. You could listen on Himalaya. You could listen on iTunes. You could listen on Spotify, wherever. And now it feels like YouTube, Spotify, and maybe Netflix. If you get big enough, Netflix will pick it up. And that's it. Like we're sort of cutting down on all these other places and Apple and Apple podcasts. But it feels like it used to be this like huge landscape of different varieties and where you could get your podcast. And I don't know why we'd get rid of that.

1:16:42Like Spotify is not threatened by small independent platforms. What do they care? I'm just writing a tweet now. Why doesn't X support RSS feed slash podcast? Yeah, for years, that was just the standard podcast. I should be able to have a tab on my profile page with my latest podcast. Yeah, that used to be how, that was the whole point. This would be insanely effective. You're broadcasting to people's iPods. That was the whole idea. Yes, it's just so annoying when people try to break standards. And I told this to Spotify when I met with them during South by and I was like, just please stop breaking the standards and please support the new standards.

1:17:25Like. The reason Spotify has so much extra traffic is because of the podcasting standard. Why would you want to break that? You're just working against yourself. And it really pisses off people like me who have a number of podcasts. And like it really makes me feel bad about my relationship with Spotify. And a lot of podcasters don't like Spotify a lot because they don't give us the controls we want. And then they don't support standards and they need to listen more. Spotify needs to listen to podcasters more. And Apple is kind of like not as engaged as they once were. They kind of went dark for a little bit, but they're getting back.

1:18:05They're realizing podcasting is a good business for them. And they're starting to, I think they got some new leadership over there. They're starting to pick up the phone and call people again. They're starting to feature podcasts and they're realizing this is a good way to keep people on their iPhones. And so, you know, take from that what you will, Spotify. YouTube, Apple, you got to kind of, you know, be in the podcaster's corner. Don't do things against podcasters. Yeah, a little behind the scenes. It's also Spotify makes it very difficult to do your distribution unless you use their tool. we're going through this behind the scenes right now where we tried to switch our distribution.

1:18:45And many of you in the audience wrote to us and said it broke things all over Spotify. It's like, you could just make that easy. Well, that was because of video, right? Yes, it was because of video. Well, it's also reporting. Like they want, if you don't use their own distribution platform, it's much harder to get your analytics. And it's like, well, just let us have our analytics. That's how we sell our ads, Spotify. Yeah, it's another important note for them. Like guys, gals, fellas, ladies, just don't be heavy handed. And sometimes it's not even heavy handed. They're just like, oh, we'll get to it.

1:19:16No, make it a priority to support open standards. Make it a priority to support the ecosystem that you've gained so much from. Nobody has gained more from podcasting than Spotify. It's like their business is just like this app, you know, like there is no Spotify without people making amazing things to listen to in Spotify. I appreciate Spotify is out there, but I don't feel appreciated by Spotify. Sometimes if Dylan comes out with like a new single or something, I'll send it to my brother, the Spotify link. But that's - No, no, I'm saying like, I don't share our podcast. No. Because we don't feel love from Spotify, I tend to share the YouTube or - X or Apple or yeah.

1:19:55Oh, the Apple, yeah. I would like to be more, I would have a better feeling about Spotify. Yeah, I don't want to just get invited to Spotify parties. That's nice, but I am not like... Spotify party is nice. Limited appeal. Yeah. Yeah, just support standards, please. Yeah. Make it a priority. That's all. Make it a priority. All right, we'll see you all next time on The Swing Stars. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.