TWiT 1100: Yoloville - Data Centers, Climate Change, and the True Cost of "Innovation"

40:11Ant Pruitt:You want it to fold. It is tiny. It folds tiny. That way though. You want it to fold that way, not that way. You know what I'm saying? The book fold as opposed to the razor fold, we'll call it the Moto razor fold. Perfect. I think I prefer the book fold to myself. I think you're an Android user though. You wouldn't get an iPhone. I am. I actually just got a new hot pink Pixel 11. Oh. Can you show us? It's not in this room, but I can show you. How can you be more than you run away from your phone? What the hell's wrong with you, Stacey? Stacey. The whole internet's in like two big monitors. No, Stacey.

40:57First of all, you got the new phone. It's got the little blink a lie on the back to tell me about emergencies. You don't have to look at it, but you need it. What if I needed you, Stacey, and you didn't have your phone at the ready? You're on this internet thing. I'm trying to text you like my life depended on it. Listen to the doctor. And your phone's in another room. During the commercial break, I expect you to ramoose. We'll bring that device that's listening to everything you say back so he can spy on you in your room. How are we supposed to know where you are? Somewhere else. This is shameful behavior.

41:24Absolutely shameful. How are we supposed to locate you? I apologize. You sound just like my husband. who is like, I texted you two and a half hours ago. I'm like, I was doing other stuff.

41:35Ant Pruitt:People get mad now if you don't respond right away. No, not if you train them. They're like, oh, that Stacy is so weird. That's what they think, you're strange. How did you put a tracking device on my vehicle? Do you have location tracking on or off on your phone? I share my location with my kid, but actually - Did your kid share it back? they did for a little bit and i felt so uncomfortable with it i was like i'm gonna turn this off unless i just i don't like it um but they they're in spain right now so it doesn't matter wow don't you want to know though like if they they i mean which isn't that exactly why you want tracking to know what's going on well they're gonna tell me i mean they'll we'll have these conversations.

42:21Stacy is so zen.

42:23Ant Pruitt:Don't let me know. I am spying on my... Does Leah have her location turned on, doctor? 100%. She can't go anywhere. Yes, she knows. Not only does she have her location, I gave her a watch, too, so when the phone dies, because she is a teenage girl and the phone's always dying, I still got backup tracking. I don't bother her. Hey, look, one night she was in Brooklyn, a club somewhere. she's only 19 years old i found out two days later she was at some concert that her friend was performing and i was like okay well you know you made it back home a lot but i need to know last thing somebody's gonna come to me and say which last time you saw your daughter i look i check every other day randomly like oh she's a class she was at the bar why are you at the bar you can't drink i you got got to know i don't know why this is just that this is different parenting i only got one do you ask if they're at the bar do you are like what's what does that conversation and look what's up with that are you at the bar at like three in the afternoon so i've lived life and when i tell her things she used to always say to me like we watch a movie and kids get a fake idea and they go to the bar she's like that's impossible that wouldn't happen i'm like well i used to get in drinking she's like well you look old now she's at the point where she is a girl and her friend was uh is a rapper and he's basically performing at bars they're the rappers are 18 years old also so they can't drink but they can get in so she's going with her friends and they're not allowed to drink, but they get access to these places.

43:47And I'm like, see, there's all kinds of random reasons why you would get into a bar. You know what I mean? They put a wristband on you so you can't drink, but you're getting in there because you're an artist and you're part of their performance. So there's all kinds of things going on. But I personally, I only got one kid. If I lose this one, I've raised her to be as perfect as I could be. I only got one. I can't, I don't have a backup. I don't have a sister. Same, all my eggs in one basket. We made a real nice basket. She knows I'm spying on her. I don't say anything. that is the thing i don't do i don't say what are you doing why are you here i don't do any of that

44:19Ant Pruitt:now my kids in their 30s i have no way well i know where henry is because he told me he's in sun valley but i'm doing what by the way just hanging with his buds i said did you take a private jet there he said no dad i flew commercial stacy if i may ask how old is yours now 20. wow okay when should i stop these time flies You're making me feel bad. Well, and I'll be clear though, Owen, I still pay for my kids' cell phone bills. Me too. Yeah. So I think I should really have location since I'm paying for it, but no. You gotta let them, I mean. You gotta fly, eagles fly, right? Let the bird, let the Stellar's J leave the nest.

45:04You gotta let them make their own way. And I think you need to do it without a safety net sometimes. Like, I think it's really important for kids to go out and be truly on their own. It's hard though, isn't it? I mean, it is hard, but just knowing where they are, I mean, basically then if something really terrible happens, which is all I'm really worried about at this point in time, right? I'm only worried if like they've been kidnapped or something's terrible. But I can't stop that if I know where it's happening. I just know where they were.

45:35Ant Pruitt:You could know where to find the body. I just like information. I'm not going to stop. Like I said, I don't stop from doing anything. Like when she's, like I said, randomly at two o 'clock in the morning i'm like where are the kids at i go check and she's somewhere i don't text her next morning like why were you here i don't ask any questions she tells me when she wants to tell me i just like to know the truth is that's that's not right that's like the government would like to know what you're doing all the time on the internet government doesn't love me or care about me as a human or a person i'm just saying your kid your kid deserves that same level of autonomy at a certain point i'm about to call her and ask her on the air that's putting them in an i would never do that no don't do that you're making me i need validation right now i need someone to back me up is it okay if i follow you around but that's what you need hold on think about what they need she could say no dad stop doing it i could look like a fool on this internet or she could say would you stop yeah oh well have that conversation with her in private just no no no i like that's a whole podcast episode stacy jesus a waste yeah save that for the podcast uncle leo knows i'm back to apple oh i'll put no no that's where we are on apple that's why that's the only thing i'll never leave apple because i can track all the devices android has that too by the way now it ain't the same it ain't as good i look i'm not as good to drive with apple boy you're speeding on the highway slow down yeah it's true so uh stacy would you you said the book form is okay and that's the new thing it opens up it's kind of like an ipad mini which i really like that form factor i'm thinking i'm gonna like this i'm gonna i'm gonna buy what i haven't got a new iphone i saw the iphone 16 pro max they have given me no reason to upgrade but i am going to get the every two or three is reasonable i think every year is too much yeah i wouldn't i went from my i had three three years of my Yeah, that's about right.

47:29I was from the 6 to the 10 in Android. What? Oh, see, I'm going from 8 to 11. But you know what? I got the pink line of death, and I tried to return it. And you know how Google's like, you can return it, or they replace it for you? I went to one of their authorized fix-it places to get a screen replaced, and they refused to do it. They were like, you just have to send it to Google. We're not going to replace this. What? But you're an authorized thing. He's like, yeah, but Google doesn't always pay us for it. if it's not like perfect and i don't want to take that risk so you know you're gonna have to um i i'm not gonna do without my phone for like a three weeks or whatever but it is a pink phone

48:11Ant Pruitt:but it's away from you now stacy it matches the the front and the back now match well no no my my android phone was my eight was green no this is old the new one's pink this is the old one's is it hibiscus is that anyway okay that's the funniest thing the name people use for these things is crazy they're just the colors yeah that was that great android event where oh it's white no no it's not white it's white white what are you talking soothing almond we we spent a lot of time we don't need to do it on this show we spent a lot of time on macbrick weekly talking about tim cook's reign which has just ended after he he took the reins uh When Steve Jobs passed in 2011, so he had 15 years as CEO, brought Apple from under a trillion dollars to almost$5 trillion in value, launched a bunch of important products.

49:09Ant Pruitt:I think the most important product, probably Apple's own chips. He shepherded the move from Intel to Apple Silicon. And that has been, maybe it was accidental. I don't know. But it turned out to be a really good move. in the age of ai they now make the hottest the most they're not hot that's probably the wrong word the most popular machines for ai you can't even get them uh john turnus uh unlike so tim cook's specialty was operations he was the coo he was the guy who made the iphone kind of possible in China and really, really tightened that down so that Apple had an incredible supply chain, incredible capabilities to make a billion phones.

49:57Ant Pruitt:Ternus comes after, he's been a long time employee, I think 25 years at Apple. He is a hardware guy. In fact, he shepherded not only the Apple silicon but also the phones so he knows the products very very well probably a good leader but uh you know also a a mystery man we don't know a lot about john we didn't know actually this might be apple we didn't we knew a lot about steve jobs we didn't know a lot about tim cook at all no i don't we still don't know a lot about tim cook we went from having a cult leader to having a professional manager he was very that's a good description yes professional manager what's the over under on him going permanently gray.

50:47Internus? Yeah. I'm going to give it to presidential four years. He is in his 50s. He'll be looking like you and Jeff. Hey, nothing wrong with that. Distinguished, right? I didn't say there's anything wrong with it. I'm just saying it's coming. I'm saying the stress of the big company that on his shoulders, like he's got that dark and lovely going on right now, those few little grays, but it's going to be look at that. Look, four years i'm gonna i think the president has gone from uh from blonde to brunette i think this is going to

51:17Ant Pruitt:be the year of the brunettes don't you i'm sorry that's too political eddie q uh who uh is long time apple boy he's kind of moved up in the chain you notice he's sitting right next to john turnus and the executive profiles he has a larger portfolio than before very energetic guy. He's the guy who has the relationships with Hollywood. It's an interesting place. Craig Federighi is still going to be there. Jaws as well, although many people think those guys may be on the way out. A lot of Tim Cook's people have retired. There is an Apple smile. Yeah, they all have it, don't they? Yeah. It's probably AI.

52:00Ant Pruitt:Or gummies. I'm not sure. It could be either. I don't know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that. That's disrespectful, Leo.

52:11Ant Pruitt:Apple is, by the way, in a big fight with OpenAI, saying, you know, you stole our employees and with it, our intellectual property. OpenAI says, we don't do that. We just hired the guys. We don't. We're not. Meanwhile, OpenAI is working on hardware, we know. And this will be a court case we're all going to be watching. With Johnny Ives, no less, right? Yeah. Johnny not mentioned in the suit, just the people Johnny hired.

52:42Nobody's last comment on the socials was, well, if you can't keep your secrets, it's not our fault.

52:46Ant Pruitt:Oh, that's not the right way to say that. I don't think a judge or jury will take well to that. They had the better plan when they said, we don't want your secrets. We don't need your secrets. We don't need no stinking secrets. That's the better plan. We're training our hiring model on your hiring model. I mean, I don't really understand what the issue is. Who's destroying books? I mean, we're just taking the... Well, OpenAI is about to learn a lot about courtrooms because of the New York Times suit. Yes. It's about to search. Filings made Friday in the New York Times suit. This is from the New York Times.

53:23Ant Pruitt:So take it with a grain. It's all closely watched lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. It included a range of copyright law and cultural references. the real question and i think it's an interesting question is if you have a copy of the new york times or the seattle times or newsday who are also suing if you have in effect ingested that content into your weights in the ai does that count as an illegal copy because it's pretty clear you cannot really generate the contents of the new york times by asking the ai for it even no matter what the time says you really can't no so is it illegal for them to have a in effect a copy in the weights they're not it isn't a copy because it's not even worse no because it gets erased it doesn't it's not held on to they learn from the relationships of the words yeah the u.s Justice Department filed a brief saying it is of the national interest, the highest interest of the United States of America for the judge to find open AI did not violate copyright law.

54:36Ant Pruitt:The Justice Department argued developing AI is critical to national security and that training AI systems sufficiently transformed the written works to new material allowed under copyright law. And it said, and I think this is really the most important point they're making, the benefits of ai far outweigh any competitive harm how often do you see the federal department of justice enter in in a private suit at this stage that's a good question i it feels like not very often if ever it may happen all the time i don't know but it just seems it seems odd they sometimes file amicus briefs but i i don't know how long they've entered into a suit or how often the trump administration is in a very difficult position because he got elected as a populist president and it's become increasingly obvious the populists the popple the people do not like ai they do not like data centers this is going to be a midterm election hot button topic they are very concerned about things like flock cameras is So, concerned I would say is late, angry about.

55:47Ant Pruitt:Angry. That's the populist side. On the other hand, he has massive donors who are big investors in AI, people like Andreessen Horowitz. So, he's got pull from two different sides there. Zuck called him, I think, recently. Yeah. To say, please don't regulate. Yeah. And we know that Mark's given money to the president. And then there's the third party, which is, I think, very important also to the White House, the defense and intelligence establishment. Intelligence establishment, we know they're using these AIs now. They want them. In fact, in a way, if I read between the lines of the Justice Department brief, that's what they're really saying.

56:29Ant Pruitt:They're saying it's important for society. No, it's important for our military and our intelligence. angle we're going to fall behind china and it's a strategic risk for the nation trump said ai dominance dominance is critical to promote national security prosperity and economic mobility for all americans actually that was uh i think he means like and i ask this like when we talk about ai dominance that just means we have the five or six top ai companies which we do right now by market cap yeah well that's i not just by market cap i would say by quality of ai but it's also quality of models yeah but it's not but that leads ability shrinking very like capabilities too yeah but it's shrinking fast yes in to to build a quality model you just need access to lots of data and maybe a breakthrough idea in how you train it which happens every now and again when we get in.

57:32Ant Pruitt:So, and by the way, a third thing, a lot of capital because you have to buy a lot of money for your, but if you think about it from that perspective, like capital for servers, the internet, like the data going in or a breakthrough in like how something is trained, the dominance is going to automatically ebb and flow based on like, if China comes up with a way to power a server using seawater just for fun, we're going to suddenly see they will become dominant. I feel like we're always very short-sighted when we start talking about this because we don't think about the components that we're actually trying to be dominant in.

58:17Then if you think about what we're caring about, the fact that we decimated our research funding for lots of things is probably really terrible. So I'm just thinking about this because this is how I think about the world and see the world when I'm about to do it.

58:30Ant Pruitt:Well, I will answer on those points. So first of all, if you look at who the leading scientists are in AI, they're almost all Chinese. Many of them working in the United States, but many of them coming from Chinese universities. So I don't think on the innovation scale, on the technology scale, we have much of a lead, if any of a lead. The Chinese have worked very fast, very effectively to develop their sustainable energy. They have a much better long-term energy prospects than we do in the United States, where we are still highly reliant on fossil fuels. And in fact, liquid and natural gas, which is highly problematic from a political point.

59:15And somebody we don't have to mention killed off projects on solar and wind. Right. Demonizing them.

59:21Ant Pruitt:So, and then now capital markets are maybe where the one thing where we really do have an advantage because we have a very vigorous and very well endowed. Yeah, but if you have a net. Capital markets are fickle. They'll go wherever they think. And in China, they also have the government. Well, they have a controlled economy, a centralized controlled economy. So you kind of don't need the capital markets because you decide where the money goes. And I think everybody agrees. I'm using mostly all the local models I use are Chinese. I mean, everybody agrees that Chinese models are catching up really rapidly.

59:55Ant Pruitt:So I think there is a threat. A threat of what? And by the way, let's add one more thing. A threat of what? Well, hold on. There's one more thing. They don't care so much about intellectual property rights. You're not seeing any lawsuits in China by the New York Times or the Beijing Times or whatever. So they have ample access to the data. They don't, nobody's slowing down data centers. what kind of data they have over there that we don't have over here because we're prissy about oh i don't know privacy and individual rights and all that so to answer your question owen i mean it really comes down to the quality of the models right and they oh there's another thing that we do have an advantage and they don't is the ability to serve those models because we have kept for the most part nvidia's chips out of the china market which jason wong says is a huge mistake because we lost he lost cuda uh as a standard the next thing that's happening and it's already happening is chinese companies are developing competitive chips and if you use deep seek or you know glm or any of the chinese models on a chinese server you're not running it on nvidia cores you're running it on chinese chips on hyundai chips and and not hyundai um xiaomi and um you're running on chips from china and huawei huawei that's the company i was trying to remember uh you're running on huawei chips and so don't forget stacy knows her chips she's a chip guru actually i want to ask her we'll get to that yeah i actually want to yeah i want to but but right now with the only thing really come to think of it we have an advantage in and it's it's rapidly fading is uh is in the nvidia chips is in gpus and and as you and i discussed on on the on on our chat earlier today i think we could have had an advantage out of the academe but a we've starved the government to starve them and b the chinese technologists who were coming over here to study are not coming here now so we're losing that's a that's a that's a brain a voluntary brain drain on our part so i understand how the American government might start to say, gee, you know, we are in this kind of cold war with China and we may lose this AI battle.

1:02:16If you think AI is important, especially if you think it's important to militarily and intelligence, that might be scary.

1:02:23Ant Pruitt:So to answer your question, oh, and it's about the quality of the AI, the models, their capabilities. Not only are we going to lose, not only are we losing, we're going to lose. This administration is inept and incompetent and just saying things out loud doesn't make any sense you read a quote from the president you forgot to say if you don't want a identifier in your backyard you're poor and back oh he did say that he said you're going to end up dumb yeah and poor again the the epa isn't checking the air pollution that they're putting out or the noise pollution no one's checking on the water when they tell me that water doesn't matter and it doesn't mean anything then on top of that uh what they just had that robotics thing where they had like the guys running and racing and one guy could shoot like a thousand baskets in a row.

1:03:06The humanoid Olympics. Only three companies from America could even compete with that, like MIT and whoever else. But the other 600 other something companies are all Chinese. They're the ones making the robots that are doing the things, running at hyperspeed and running in the walls. We're not doing any of that stuff besides getting fake AI-generated stuff from Elon telling me that we're going to have robots running around that he's going to build for us when he can't even get the cars right or the spaceships right. So losing what we've already technically lost. We have the intellectual property.

1:03:38But again, like Jeff said, China doesn't have any of the gates holding them back from stealing. That's why you see the whole thing like Nike is like, Nike's stock has gone down because they found out that reps are real. Do you guys think they're using the same factories? Now you can go buy them straight from China for$50 instead of$250. Now nobody's buying real Nikes anymore because why would you do that?

1:04:01Ant Pruitt:Do you guys think that bipedal humanoid robots actually are the future? No. Okay. I'm just curious. They certainly are leading in this respect. It gets you to something, right? You're doing it to get to the same reason they put cameras on a barber and said, hey, we'll pay you$10 ,000 for you to cut hair for a year and let us scan and copy you cutting hair so we can teach our robots how to cut hair. At some point, this stuff will matter. Right now, it's all fun and games until it's not. So I just signed up for an event at the Aspen Institute where they're looking. You missed the best part. You cut away.

1:04:44Ant Pruitt:No, not you. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to see when he ran this to the wall and all that stuff. We just want to see. No, we want to believe technology works all the time. This is an Instagram. Yeah, there you go. That was the one. From evolving.ai. Yeah, this is all of the outtakes from the Robot Olympics. Now, stay on this one because the robot does a good job climbing up onto the cube and looks kind of human. He's standing at the edge now. He's going to jump off. This is going to be very exciting. He's going to leap from that five-foot-high cube and land on his head. Oh, I shouldn't laugh.

1:05:17Ant Pruitt:I shouldn't laugh. They're keeping track. Do not laugh. Look, look. You wouldn't even believe that was possible. no it's pretty amazing in fact i remember laughing uh 10 15 years ago at the darpa grand challenge where they had uh self-driving vehicles they couldn't go 10 feet they'd drive right off the remember that stacy they drive right off the road we've come a long way hey the wright brothers only flew 148 feet and they took credit for the plane you know their plane didn't it wasn't the plane that got us to where we are their plane couldn't go 100 feet so my favorite in the humanoid uh uh olympics was the uh the that somebody realized you don't have to run if you're a robot the same way humans do we do our arms like this because it has to do with how our hips pivot and the robot ran like this it was a very into looked weird and it was very fast so there's a it's a little weird that the slavish adherence to the bipedal form like to make it look like us isn't necessarily the most efficient best way to do this yeah because the i mean you do learn a lot of sorry oh no i was just gonna say you can learn a lot about human mechanics and even like where things might break down but yeah i think many of the robots in our lives will not be he was laughing like us sorry i'm laughing at the robot the lost might not see it used to be these videos would scare you when you say it's all creepy and awful now you're laughing at them which is a step forward i think yeah creepy ones were the dog okay big dog is still a terrifying robot boston dynamics still very scary i you know what ice is buying those yeah yeah that's really that is terrifying um i think that's the real value to some degree of bipedal robots or robot dogs is their fear factor how scary they are yeah and they can control if they're armed yeah if they're armed and autonomous yes especially if they're armed uh anyway yeah so I don't know if the humanoid robot games provided much more than just mirth and merriment so I want to go back to the data centers for a second because Craig Newmark linked to an event for the Yasmin Institute upcoming next week.

1:07:43And this week, it's really interesting that there's an argument for alternatives to data centers. What if we approach it like public AI, centering public access, accountability, sustainability, the idea of tiny distributed networks, public-owned utilities, the role of librarians, farmers, community advocates. So I think there's an effort to say, okay, we're going to need data centers, but the way that Elon Musk does it with jet engines ain't the way.

1:08:11Ant Pruitt:Well, I mean, I hate to say it, but we're using a data center right now to record this, to stream it. You're watching it. You're watching it from a data center, not from anywhere. Well, you downloaded it, but you downloaded it from a data center. The entire internet is data centers. Your bank is in data centers. You need to price in the externalities of the harms of a data center. I mean, I've covered data centers for, what, two decades? Hey, just like that guy who covered the Microsoft, Steve Lohr. I'm like the Steve Lohr of data centers. Is it that we're just making too many now all of a sudden?

1:08:46Ant Pruitt:I mean, because we've always needed data centers, right? I mean, yes, we are rapidly expanding the amount of compute that we need for AI, right? That is unquestionable and it is a exponential increase in demand. But we also are doing it under the older economic model of data centers. So if we actually start charging what these things might be worth, one, it would slow down our innovation. So you've got to think about that, but maybe that's what the government does is they put their dollars towards paying for better innovation. Let's put it that way, as opposed to today's market capitalism, which pays for the cheapest innovation, which is worth thinking about, which is why that's why government funding exists is because we want to do things in a way that makes sense and prices in those externalities.

1:09:47Ant Pruitt:We wouldn't have the internet if it weren't for government funding. Right. Yeah. And it took a little bit of time. I mean, the problem is we took technology out of the technology industry or we kept that in, but we added a whole bunch of finance bros. Oh yeah. And cultists and crazy test girl cultists, which I think is the real problem here. You know, they were always there. Like, I mean, if you hung out with enough nerds, there's always that there's one or two that you're just in power now. That's the, but yeah, now they're the bosses. They're not the bosses. They look like they're the bosses, but they've just been given a lot of money.

1:10:23And the guys are like, yeah, you know, this dude believes in aliens. Don't worry about it. He's going to, he's going to believe in aliens. He's going to deliver this technology.

1:10:30Ant Pruitt:The guy who started Excite believed in aliens. Peter Thiel's kind of a boss. Peter Thiel just took over a state in Germany. Peter Thiel's kind of like trying to run half the globe. All right, we've got to take a break. I want to come back and find out what took over a state in Germany. That's an interesting thing to say. We're going to take a break and find out what that all means. We're talking Twit here with Stacey Higginbotham from Consumer Reports, policy fellow. So great to see you again. Stacey's Book Club is a regular feature of our club. I hope you're a club member. You can go to the next book club.

1:11:05Ant Pruitt:I think the voting is still going on. Anthony, if you're there, I know you are. Give me a link to the poll so we can see what's going on with the voting. There is no anti-memetics division. It's going to be that? Okay. That's actually a great book. I've read that book. Okay. By far, like a landslide. Nice. 82 of the vote oh our politics should be so clear as stacy's book club who is quantum qntm is that a human or is it written by a robot it's a person um they have an actual name i don't remember what it is now but it's an it's a very interesting book uh i'm glad we're going to read that that'll be fun so that's yeah we went with a slight horror theme for that was our oh it's a halloween for yeah i assume we'll do it oh my gosh already yeah i mean pumpkin spice time man it's here oh no you don't do psls it's matcha matcha do you nobody cares about matcha no no no pumpkin spice is no longer like the reigning flavor king matcha is the flavor king i never had it i never had a pumpkin size now that it's not hip anymore jeff you and i can have it i think i'm gonna have one Have you ever had pumpkin pie?

1:12:23Well, yeah, but I've never had a pumpkin spice latte. It's the same spices in a latte with a lot of sugar.

1:12:28Ant Pruitt:And it has nothing to do with pumpkin, by the way. Never saw a pumpkin in its life. Nope. It's all spice mostly, right? Yeah. It's all spice, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. That's good stuff. Yeah, it's delicious. Chai's good too.

1:12:48Ant Pruitt:Also with us, Owen, JJ Stone. And we call him O-Doctor. I still don't remember why, but I'm sure there's a reason. So real quick, Stacey, you lucked out on this because she doesn't think it's your fault. I texted my daughter and I said, do you care that I randomly check your location? Leah said, tell Uncle Leo who else is going to come and save me. Yes! She doesn't think it's you. She thinks Leo asked that question, so you're off the hook. I'm still allowed to randomly check until she finds another man in her life to come and take care of her. Who's going to rescue me? How do you feel guilty? Isn't that nice?

1:13:24Ant Pruitt:You're the knight in shining armor for her. Well, I'm glad you checked with her. That's good. That's the right way to do it. I never even thought to ask. I'm like, hey, look, I still pay the bills. You got a phone because of me. I'll turn this thing off up in here. Don't let me ask no questions. Stacey got me feeling guilty. Also, Jeff Jarvis is with us. we will see him as a regular feature on intelligent machines and we're so glad to get you on a weekend as well i'm glad always to be on the on the big kids table big kids tables what he calls it our show today brought to you by my mattress helix sleep loving the helix sleep every night when i get into bed i you do you do this if you don't you need a helix sleep i get in a bed i go ah it's just ah it just lets all the trouble of the day goes ah just you relax you feel good if you've got a great mattress you i think that's 90 of life because you spend at least a third of your life on that thing maybe more some of the most valuable moments on that beautiful mattress and what better time than labor day weekend it's labor day weekend to give your bedroom the upgrade it deserves instead of are you i mean if you're not going ah if you're struggling through another night of tossing and turning if you're looking at that mattress going do i have to do i have to get in bed you you should treat yourself to the deep restorative sleep you've been dreaming of don't settle for mattresses made overseas with questionable material to say the least upgrade to a helix mattress proudly assembled and shipped from Arizona and finally say goodbye to night sweats, back pain, emotion transfer.

1:15:14Ant Pruitt:Lisa and I realized, I think it's more than a year ago, that we'd been sleeping on our mattress, same mattress about eight years. We thought it's time for a new one. I think you're supposed to get a new one every eight or 10 years. So we shopped around, we looked, we read all the reviews. One of the things we liked about Helix, among many, they have over 20 mattress models. There's one to fit every sleep style every sleep preference and they make it easy to figure out which you are because you can take the helix sleep quiz we did it matches you with the perfect mattress based on you know are your front sleeper side sleeper back sleeper do you like firm do you like soft you mean there's a lot of possibilities so take the quiz choose the mattress and by the way they're happy with helix guarantee means that if it's not exactly the right mattress you can get a new one easy seamless returns and exchanges on that happy with helix guarantee so it's a risk-free customer first experience i think it's really worth getting the right mattress it's worth taking the time to just get that right mattress it worked for us in fact it worked so well i'm i'm getting more deep sleep i'm sleeping longer and most importantly i'm feeling better in the morning it's helix actually did a wesper sleep study where they measured participant sleep performance after doing what we did switching from an old mattress to a new helix mattress they found 82 percent of participants saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle that's the most important one where the brain gets cleaned out you know the cerebral spinal fluid comes up the brain dilates because washes it out it's you know usually not more than half an hour an hour a night but it's it's the critical cycle participants on average achieve 25 more minutes of deep sleep per night for me it was that was what I got.

1:17:02Ant Pruitt:It was doubling my average. They also, participants on average, achieved 39 more minutes of overall sleep per night. And it's pretty subjective, but I can tell you, I feel so great when I get up in the morning. I love it. Time and time again, Helix Sleep has been named the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. You can read the reviews right there. They deliver that mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. And of course, that great Happy with Helix guarantee. So you know you'll be completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helixsleep.com slash twit.

1:17:37Ant Pruitt:27 % off site-wide during Labor Day, the best of web offer. That's helixsleep.com slash twit. 27 % off site-wide exclusively for listeners of This Week in Tech. Now make sure you do enter our show name after checkout This Week in Tech so they know we sent you. And this offer ends September 13th. so don't wait and if you're listening after the sale ends don't worry they've always got great deals check them out helixsleep.com slash twit thank you helix for my mattress and for a great night's sleep and for sponsoring our show helixsleep.com slash twit when i was a kid my grandfather used to tell me something i'll never forget and i tell people all the time three things you don't cheap out on tires your shoes and your bed that's so true yeah they they got to be bright they got to be good and the bed is great thing you spend more time on your bed than you do on your tires or your shoes you do and if you don't not as much time as eating pumpkin pie

1:18:40i've never had pumpkin pie in my life what you're on america okay wait a minute wait a minute no i know why because you like sweet potato pie yes i yes delicious i i literally ask when i go places what is that i want because you know it's a it's a good confusing thing they look they look the same they're both orange but they do not taste the same they almost smell the same and i've been i've got and i'm big so i got to take the sniff test i'm like this ain't right i just i refuse

1:19:07Ant Pruitt:to do it there is nothing like a good sweet potato pie i grew up my grandmother making 30 40 pies with the church and everybody in town and I'm not going back. I'm never ever ever doing it. So I've never had a pumpkin pie. Shame on pumpkin pies and that picture is blasphemous. Burn it from the internet. Maybe we're eating sweet potato pie. You don't know. That's true. It says pumpkin pie on the sign. I was about to say, didn't the sign say pumpkin pie eating? It could be a lie. It does not read. You can't trust that. Do you put cream on a sweet potato pie? Oh yeah. You do. Okay. For Thanksgiving when you're made Owen's secret macaroni and cheese recipe and it was dynamite.

1:19:49Ant Pruitt:So good. Season is coming upon us, Uncle Leo. It's time once again. Macaroni and cheeses, turkeys and pies. I think this is when Stacey gets hungry and goes off to get a cookie. I'm like, dang it, you guys. She used to get waffles during the show. She would go sneak off and get a cookie or a waffle. Let's see. What else is going on? meta accepts u.s safety rules but says but the rest of you guys and the rest of the world could you just chill a little bit as governments consider banning social media for under 16s rest of world rights meta is turning to influencers to argue that parental controls are a better solution now i am not an influencer and nobody from meta has ever talked to me but i kind of agree the parents should be in charge well so we still have alcohol limits and laws we have anti-smoking laws we have laws plus parental control for lots of things that provide a documented harm to people whose brains are not done developing i'll tell you the big difference okay hit me with your big difference when you go into a store to buy liquor or cigarettes and you show them your id that's one thing but in order for these laws to be to take effect worldwide or even in the united states or state by state every single person who uses that has to provide an id over the internet where it may be stored and misused in other ways it is a very different thing to do we don't have to do it that way oh okay this gets to me because we have We keep choosing wrong from a technology perspective.

1:21:37And the reason we do it is because companies don't want to be held liable. They don't want to be part of it. But if you had Apple or Google or Samsung or whoever owned your device locally understand your age and check for you there, then it is a local check. And NIST actually had built a framework.

1:21:59Ant Pruitt:The National Institute for Standards and Technology. Yes. Sorry, those guys, real nerds. Now that she's a bureaucrat, she just speaks. I know. NIST was always my favorite agency. I love NIST. Yes. I'm sure y 'all are all surprised to hear that. Anyway, so there are ways to do it, but what we've got is this stupid, stupid, stupid thing where we're like, yeah, let's show a really important government document over the internet and let some company that we've never heard of before store it for us in a way that we can't check to make sure it's secure. And oh my God, if we go scroll down a couple stories, it's not.

1:22:37So I agree with you. Age verification is terrible and wrong, and we should not be doing it on the internet for a bunch of reasons. But we didn't have to do it the way that we're currently doing it, is all my point is.

1:22:53And now we're going to have to argue over this. Well, it's a couple of things about this. One is that meta is$17 billion over 10 years isn't a lot of money when you adjust for stock prices and acquisitions and such. Second, it's a case now of meta and regulatory capture, trying to impose this view on others. And I read a Q &A with Julia Angwin and Daphne Keller. Daphne's at Stanford. I respect her greatly. And she said that now she fears this is going to become the standard without any data, without any testing. And if others come up with better means to manage this, they're not going to be able to because they're going to be expected to follow this model out of this settlement.

1:23:34But doesn't Meta want Apple to do this?

1:23:37Ant Pruitt:I thought Meta wanted the platforms to do what Stacey was talking about, not make Meta do it. Yeah, I'm talking also about the two hours a day and all that stuff. Yeah, he's talking more about the rules. Yeah, I agree. I look at the regulatory capture potential here. So explain regulatory capture. It's basically like when a company gets to make the rules and they control their agency. So the telcos and the FCC is a great example. And they get to write whatever they want is their regulation. That's how we got shaken stirred, which is not a great. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they'll make it better this next round.

1:24:14Ant Pruitt:Hasn't that worked? Are you kidding me? Do we get spam calls still? Oh, wait a minute. Okay. I was like, wait, what? Oh, wait a minute. That was, I mean, in principle, that seemed like a good idea. The idea that you couldn't use a phone number unless you authenticated it from your carrier. Like you really were a real person, not a fake number. The reason it didn't work is because they blew the attestation part on that. There were other bottles in place. But you know what? They're fixing it, possibly. Really? I'm filing comments with the FCC on Tuesday about part of this process. So whose fault was that?

1:24:50Was that the FCC's fault? It was bad legislation. So the rules that...

1:24:58Ant Pruitt:On the surface of it seemed like a good idea. On the surface, everything's a good idea. The devil's always in the details. I mean, that's why people like me have a job. that because i was i was an advocate for shaking shaking stir and you you were it was not a terrible crazy plan it did put a lot of power into it it let the carriers off the hook and it it gave a lot the loopholes were so big you could drive i don't know how many scam calls people get a day a billion scam calls a day through it yeah it's clear it hasn't worked yeah more fax machine policies it seems like to me so the idea was that that a a carrier couldn't get couldn't operate in the united states unless they set up an authentication system that would say yes this person is a subscriber with this phone number and that authentication was provable on the other end in the receiving company they could that was the one of them was shaken and one was stirred that they would say oh yes okay authenticated we're going to let that one through and of course spammers in order for them to do what their dirty work don't use that's why it's always coming from your area code and sometimes even for your neighborhood because they fake the numbers and shaken and stirred would stop that right but it didn't and that's what puzzles me so it okay you really want to do this well give me the next next 30 chips give me the 30 000 foot if you can All right.

1:26:24Ant Pruitt:I'm going to try. So the FCC did slowly cut off phone companies that didn't agree to this. And by now I think they've cut off everybody that didn't agree to it. Right. So part of the issue is, all right. With Shaken.Story, they created this like three tiered system where you could authenticate yourself as like a legitimate provider with a carrier using, it was like A, B and C attestations. and if you were like the strongest level of sort of like you were totally like the carrier has done business with you with you for years they know who you are that's like the highest level what happened your calls would always go through the second two tiers were a little bit more dodgy like maybe they don't know you so well but you seem to be legit they you know seem okay to me and then there's like you just started up yesterday you're based in cambodia i don't know about you that i think it was the middle tier is where it got the carriers have discretion in letting those middle tier calls through and what happened is they make money that's the real problem isn't it that they make money on these fake calls so so the attestation you know they're like well let's just i'll be a little more legit yeah that's really the problem is if if they're making money on these they're they're not incented to make it work and the fcc has to really put down the hammer and the fcc is in the pockets of the we just don't answer our phone anymore this is the regulatory capture part so they were allowed to do this because you know yeah anyway okay so meta and regulatory capture so how yeah what is the analogy here a couple things one is that that meta pays less money if is it more money forgetting which uh if the government convinces the other major social platforms oh yeah in this in this settlement that meta made which was very weird they said we're going to pay 18 billion dollars over 10 years not much in other words and we'll give you another of that five billion dollars is dependent on snapchat and tick tock and youtube doing the same thing which is weird i don't get the logic of that why would the well the ags i guess wanted to strong arm those other come no but the companies don't care there's no prisoners dilemma there but then the other but then what that does is that sets up the rules here the two hours a day and all that and and um there's a lot of argument here that the time limits are not don't work and could be damaging and don't really address the problem But now, because of the settlement, not law, not, you know, adjudicated court law, the settlement.

1:29:13Now this becomes de facto the standard for protecting children with no data whatsoever. Is this going to do a damn thing?

1:29:20Ant Pruitt:And now Meta is going out and paying influencers to advocate. Well, it isn't paying influencers to advocate. My God. I know. Where is my influencer money? Oh, nobody listens to me. That's the problem. again i've told you this before you're not doing the business the right way when it comes to stuff like that but it's all your soul leo it's always amusing to me when they talk about protecting kids when there's so many helicopter parents that are not helicopter parents they just want to shove an ipad in their kid's face and say go on and go isn't that part of the problem you see that everywhere and every week there's a video like oh billy ordered a dirt bike how did billy order a dirt bike i saw you on amazon mom and i just pressed all the buttons you want me to have somebody regulate that you gave them the device and you didn't lock it up and this is something i'm not talking about old people in fashion things again but there are so many uh hip and current parents that don't know any better my one i brought the story up a billion times we talked about it my daughter's phone is blinging in the middle of the night and she was like in the eighth grade ninth grade she's had a phone since she was six but anyway her phone starts going off i'm like who is messaging her and her friend got a phone for christmas she's 12 years old two o 'clock in the morning on snapchat just sending off snaps and she was getting waking up late for school when i told her dad i'm like yo she's on the phone i know she's not i'm trying to she's like dude she's sending my daughter messages at 2 a.m that's why she's not waking up for school because he's complaining about her not waking up for school he's like i'm checking her phone there's no text messages i'm like she's not in the texts she's on he didn't know he didn't understand it he did not understand so it's like you can't tell i mean not you can't it's just hard to regulate something when the parents aren't even regulating the children themselves when they just want to give a kid a device so they leave them alone for 10 minutes a day or well that's why i kind of like the idea of the burden being on the platforms and the phone manufacturers apple is i think stepped up they're doing better parental controls um people don't like that either a woman made a video went viral that it said oh is your they're using um the facetime group chat thing and it said this conversation might be harmful i don't know what the kids said that triggered that but since they had like child parental things on there it turned off the call and the woman's like well how come apple's listening in on my thing like well you don't want them sending nudes and all this other kind of stuff like they're checking things because you said it was a child using the device so it's again you're asking for things and people complain about them it's such a weird and apple probably and every company that deals with customers knows that they know that this is going to be a problem for their customers.

1:31:51Also, Jeff Koss, if you remember, who wrote the 26 words that made the internet? Or was it 25? Or was it 27? I forget already.

1:31:58Ant Pruitt:We're talking about section 230. Don't talk about section 230. Jeff wrote the definitive quote. Do you really want to get into this? He just posted on Lawfare about the First Amendment problems with the meta service there. And there have been cases about children have First Amendment rights too. Well, that's why, remember, Remember, you weren't here, but we talked about this last week or the week before. That's why the attorneys who are going after Metta were smart to say it's a product liability case. It's not about speech. But it still has implications for speech. Well, I agree, but the jury didn't agree in the case, in the LA case.

1:32:31Ant Pruitt:And apparently Metta thought that they were going to have the same problem with this most recent case because they settled shortly after the trial began. And that tells me they felt like it's not going to go well. In any event,$18 billion over 10 years is not much for Meta. I think they got a good deal. It's another case of getting away with murder, so to speak. I read they spend$2 billion a year on lawsuits. Yeah. Your legal budget. So that's actually higher than the amount they're going to pay in the fine. The lawyers are making that like bandits. I got in the wrong business, that's for sure.

1:33:09How are they starving homeless people? Where does the money go? How are people starving and how are their homeless people? You just throwing out$2 million. Got the wrong priorities. Bines. And I'm like, my God, the money, the thing about the AI that we talked about earlier that I didn't say because I'm just trying not to yell about AI all the time is they say the government needs us to excel and do all these things. Well, you're going to let them IPO for companies that aren't making any money. Like you read the articles like, well, Uber was making money. None of these guys are making any money.

1:33:43They're about to IPO and put it on the backs of the American people and get rich and get paid out for what? Building a product that the government says we have to lead in and you're going to build all these data centers or roam people's air. It's just a big old scam and I can't stand it, even though I use it. So don't – I'm a hypocrite. I know. But at least I'm not one of my agents and firing people like Uncle Leo. I'm out here editing my videos and doing rational things with my AI.

1:34:07Ant Pruitt:Are you doing that? That's cool. Yeah, yeah. My AI stays employed. I haven't fired anybody yet. you know no i hired him right away back i had him actually i hired him to to do an investigation the local ai that i installed screwed up so bad and here's the here's the post-mortem i said did i break hermes or do does it need a better human running it and uh it's it it's it gave me the whole this is astra gave me the whole thing the whole post-mortem the breakdown i preserved the evidence it might be a problem it is that's what i i you know i thought i was being generous is that is it a me problem is it well no not really but then i don't know do i trust it couldn't be me couldn't be me uh let's take a little pause a little tidy pause as we continue uh talking about the week's tech news and this week in tech with stacy higginbotham from consumer reports owen jj stone from parts unknown yep i believe probably somewhere close to philadelphia i'm just guessing you're you're absolutely right i'm in a black box very close by checking on all roads and bridges wish i was in new york city they got a great mayor up there riding a bicycle around down all the time doing you like the commie huh but you got pretzels and cheese sticks man so you know we do have you do and probably sweet potato pie if you know where to look that's right that's right earth and the uh cacio e pepe kid jeff jarvis author of hot type we're doing the old what would google do i mean um this week at google best hits yeah cacio pepe no i think we were all into the chipotle at the time it's all about well stacy made royal fun of me for my got your frozen cacio pepe I'm going to taste for it tonight.

1:36:01Oh, no.

1:36:04Ant Pruitt:I mean, I'm on my I'm batching it because the family's going out to see Spider-Man and I refuse to go see comic book movies. So they're just leaving me behind. So see comic book movies. Come on, Grandpa. Spider-Man is a comic book movie. Yeah, it's a book. At least it's a comic book movie. you know how many movies are out there any book or any literature attached to it how many pages you know how many kids learn how to read from Spider-Man thank you Spider-Man did you see the Odyssey Leo not yet that's based on a book as well that's a comic book it's true it was a spoken comic book it's an audio book turned into a movie yeah no I haven't seen the Odyssey maybe I should go with them they see Spider-Man and I'll go see the Odyssey you can't see the odyssey it's a comic book there's pictures and there's a story it's a poem actually so you're not allowed to see it oh they've got magical beings and witches and no you're not allowed to see the odyssey that's not no you sirens yes you're only allowed to see reasonable rational things how many spider men are there just out of curiosity there's a lot of them like 15 000 who's who's the current spider-man tom holland right tom holland there's three like live action but if you go into like the into the spider-verse spider-man oh that one movie had a bunch of them yeah spider pig there's probably a spider leo in one universe you know it's spider did cut spider noir so nick cage's spider noir doesn't get a second season It didn't get a second season?

1:37:45It's got so many awards lined up, nominations for awards, and they did not do a season two. I hate that. And it was black and white. Yeah, I thought it was kind of interesting.

1:37:55Ant Pruitt:Well, you could choose. You could choose black, white, or color. It got canceled. Amazon is ruthless. They are just ruthless. They're throwing money at things, and they don't keep things that people want. I don't understand the business model. Not enough people want it. Not enough product placement. I mean, it didn't match their metrics. If you view everything as like some sort of return on investment as opposed to creating a cultural or an artistic good, boom. Spider-Dwar on Nick Cage? Yeah, it's worth watching because it's very interesting. Nick Cage is very interesting. Paris is going to be very upset.

1:38:35Ant Pruitt:Oh, no, she knows all about it. Oh, that they canceled it? Oh, I don't know about that. As long as we get a new season to Reacher, which is basically again another comic book TV show. yeah that was based on a book come on it's an airport book but it's a book it's a book i'm i'm lumping now i'm gonna just i'm gonna justify comic books with all books now because leo's made me angry so i like comic books i don't like comic book movies i can't trust you you like those marvel movies you like all of those i i they got me young uncle leo they got me young when you were when i was a kid you know what it was back in the day when you would watch wonder woman and she would just twirl like this and they put a starburst in front of her and she would transform and be like oh this is cool now it's so realistic i'm like this is everything i dreamed of is when i was reading the comics and i'm trying to imagine flying through space i could actually see the thing that i saw my whole life growing up and it's pretty cool half the content is trash but it's still nice to see it it's good real thing yes yes it's like there's been a few there's been a good a few that i like did you read comic books when you were a kid leo did you have a childhood no no he was he was reading tech uh journals and in fact doing as a kid I wasn't reading comic books I was reading the cat of Monte Cristo which is kind of a comic book but it's with words not pictures yeah pictures you're taking your head yeah I mean it's a serial get it together there are so many literary comic books I have to say that maybe when you were you know what Leo he grew up it was comic books were not literally they were comic books there was archie and jughead it was superman and batman i went through it was very brief period of buying them then i regretted all the money i spent on them yeah because your mom threw them out and you could have made billions uh my grandmother threw away my grandfather's archie and jughead comic book collection that was worth 350 000 and she did it after he passed away because she said those are for kids and i hated the fact that he had them my aunt went down and went to the basement to go look for them and She's like, I threw that stuff out a year after your grandfather passed away.

1:40:35He had one through 50 in pristine condition. She's like, do you know how much money those things were? Nobody wants that kid trash, those coloring books. She called them coloring books.

1:40:46Ant Pruitt:Coloring books. I like your grandma. We're going to take a break. We'll come back with more. You're watching this week in tech. Our show today brought to you by Doppel, as in doppelganger. You're double. AI has made social engineering attacks so much more convincing than ever from phishing emails that are indistinguishable from the real thing. But even worse now, fake websites, spin it up in a minute. Impersonation attempts, it's becoming more and more difficult to tell what's real from what's not, what's designed to deceive you. That's why organizations need more than a collection of point solutions they need a unified approach to stopping attacks before they reach your people that's why you need doppel doppel is an ai native social engineering defense platform doppel strengthens human risk management by training employees to recognize deception it provides digital risk protection across every channel and delivers agentic email security that doesn't just score the inbox but takes down the attacker infrastructure behind the message so it can't hurt you anymore it does what owen jj stone would do to anybody who tried to attack his daughter takes it down man doppel protects the entire social engineering attack chain with one comprehensive platform digital risk protection detects threats across multiple channels links alerts into a real-time threat graph and then uses AI-driven infrastructure disruption to stop attacks at the source.

1:42:23Ant Pruitt:Those insights also power phishing simulations and security awareness training. So you're getting the best possible training to help strengthen employee defenses. Next generation training and testing based on actual threats from today, not yesterday. Email security. It inspects every message, traces it back. This is mind-boggling. Traces it back to the attacker infrastructure behind it and helps take that infrastructure down so the campaign can't target your organization again. Doppel also offers best-in-class integrations and partnerships. So it's so easy. It works alongside your existing security stack.

1:43:00Ant Pruitt:Join hundreds of companies already using Doppel to protect their brand and people from social engineering attacks. Doppel, outpacing what's next in social engineering. Learn more at doppel.com. That's D-O-P-P-E-L.com. We thank them so much for supporting. This Week in Tech. Yeah, Amazon. They're going to be, they're in a little bit of hot water. FTC is suing them. We'll see what happens. Saying that Amazon has been secretly and systematically overcharging for ads. This might do better because they're not screwing consumers. They're screwing Amazon's advertisers. Amazon says. Well, the FTC did just get against Amazon.

1:43:47They had a settlement against Amazon for screwing consumers.

1:43:49Ant Pruitt:Oh, so they're not new to this. This is the FTC and 22 state attorneys general. They say Amazon used a secret ad surcharge to drive up prices for ads on its website and app. They were, oh, okay. So he says, the chairman of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, says that these higher advertising prices were passed on to consumers. So it isn't like we skated. according to the complaint amazon violated the ftc act in a dozen state laws that's why 22 states attorneys general are involved this was a year after amazon paid two and a half billion dollars for that lawsuit you mentioned stacy over a prime subscription practices and canceling spider-man noir and amazon's second price auctions for uh ads on its platform that's what they call the second price auction, the winning bidder is supposed to pay one cent more than the second highest bidder.

1:44:53Ant Pruitt:The FTC says Amazon's been manipulating those auctions since 2019. It ain't one penny. Up to 80 % more. Is that what an article said? Yes. That's insane. In Amazon's auctions, this is, as explained internally by Amazon's senior vice president in charge of Amazon ads, this is from the ftc's complaint in amazon's auctions the second price isn't set by an actual bidder you're not one set ahead of another person but by amazon in the form of a quote proxy second price that we calculate so it's a penny more than what we say the next highest bidder was the ftc says this is what this is what you're willing to charge this is what we think you should pay yeah we'll go with the we think you should we think you should call it an auction yeah how did you get caught who ratted you out like how that's a good question that's what i want to know who dry snitched on that because that's the markup on that is so insane and greedy ftc says 20 billion dollars 20 billion since 2019 over five years because it uh apparently ended and amazon 24 advertising is alone is now bigger than the entire magazine industry yeah that's something people don't think of amazon as an advertising company but it really is that's probably besides from amazon web services that's probably their their number two revenue source is ads and they're going to find like what five billion yeah right 20 billion that they made profit it.

1:46:38Everything on the tech, I mean, all of the monetization, not monetization strategies, but all these tech companies, they're like, oh, I'm going to be an e-commerce platform. Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. But they all come back to ads, which is one of their largest or second largest revenue sources. And it's just baffling to me that as consumers, many of us don't have a lot of money to spend on things. So I'm just like, when is this going to break, surely it can't go on forever that reaching our limited supply of dollars is going to be worth as much as these companies are making.

1:47:18But AI is going to fix all that for us, Stacey, and that's why we have to win the AI race. AI is really interesting because if you have agents going out looking for things that you actually need as a consumer, then there's no reason to look for ads and there's no reason to buy ads if you're a company. You're way better off striking a deal with an agent, like an agent supplier. I was just thinking about this because that Alexa, Amazon Alexa AI, the personal shopper, they announced that Alexa would start looking out for books from authors you've liked historically, things that they know you're looking for, basically.

1:48:02And for Jeff's book, if I just said, hey, Amazon, just let me know when Jeff's book comes out. I like his stuff. His publisher doesn't have to buy an ad. They could just make sure that they update the Alexa API with the fact that Jeff's book's out. And that's just a really interesting kind of switch.

1:48:19Ant Pruitt:That's a good way to do it, right? That makes it a question of whether or not companies, a lot of ad companies are now rejiggering to sell to agents. Right. Well, that's the agent. So in Amazon's own PR briefing on this, that's exactly what happened. So they said, so we said that we were going to, we didn't want you to pay more than this, a penny more than the highest bid you beat. So there's an auction for an ad placement and you bid a dollar and somebody else bet 50 cents and you beat the 50 cents. But Amazon said, but good news, we're not going to charge you a dollar. We're going to charge you 51 cents.

1:49:03Ant Pruitt:That makes sense in principle until they say, but then we realize this is in their own press release that we were undervaluing our ads. We didn't charge enough. And they could have set the price for those ads on their own. They were free to do so. They should have just said what the price was instead of lying. Yeah, the issue is they lied. It's a deceptive ad practice. That's the issue. So they said, with relevant ads increasingly winning at prices below market value we began to test a concept called soft reserve prices a real-time minimum value that seeks to better reflect what the actual placement is worse and we that's called setting a price amazon which again they could have gone that's anti-capitalism right there that's we also introduced what we called a hard reserve which is the minimum a bid must surpass to enter an auction that helps cover our costs okay that's fair but they what they did is they use machine learning to figure out what the price was that advertiser was willing to pay our auction looks at a combination of which ad is most relevant to the customer and the price they'd say this out loud and advertiser is willing to pay amazon is really the mafia i you know i again i being a hypocrite person i i have amazon prime right and i watch spider noir and now they have commercials where i've had it for years and i never had any commercials and i was like well you get commercials or you're gonna pay extra and when i by the way i immediately paid the extra they got me i i did not like youtube i'm not gonna i'm not gonna complain about people being criminals and downloading things somewhere else but i'm just saying when I watch it and I suffer through the commercials, I refuse to even touch my phone or walk near my phone.

1:50:50I'm about to start taking the Stacey approach. Now, in fact, when I watch a show, I'm probably going to leave my phone in the other room because they love to do the, oh, what did you search on and leave in your cart and put it up on the screen to remind you that you left it in your cart. And I'm not scanning no QR codes. I'm not clicking no buttons, nothing. I'm going to suffer through this minute and 30 seconds of trash that you're trying to sell me and I'm never buying anything that you tried to sell me because I was getting it for free and now you're charging me and trying to upcharge me I refuse and pro tip if you leave stuff in your cart and don't buy it immediately on your little impulse buy they come back in three or four days it was like would you like this five ten fifteen percent coupon the the item in your cart is just dropped by ten percent you dang gum right it did because I didn't need it and I'm getting the savings because I'm on your tricks phone.

1:51:36And I know, I'm sorry.

1:51:39Ant Pruitt:I think you should do dramatic reading of this Amazon's response to the FTC's lawsuit. I think it would be much more interesting. In Amazon's defense, they consider themselves a data-driven company. And what they're really saying, what they want to do is have that pricing set by data. Which again, they could have done. And they should just say it up front, this is how much it's going to cost. Yeah. I mean, there was the amazing thing about Google. When AdSense started, it was wonderfully counterintuitive. You didn't get the higher position because you paid more. You got the higher position because your ad performed.

1:52:12Yeah. Right? Because Google said that's relevant and that's more useful to the users and so da, da, da, da. Right? And so they set new rules for how these auctions operated. And you can set the rules. You can set the rules.

1:52:22Ant Pruitt:They do say, and this might be persuasive to the court, that the cost of ads, the average winning bid for sponsored products to ads fell 50 % over the five years. year period because advertisers are paying less for their ads increasingly winning placements with lower bids so that's they say and this is this is the critical language there was no harm to consumers as a result the advertisers paying less not more but in this case the customer the ftc is protecting the FTC app doesn't require you to have harm. They don't? Oh, but the court might. Okay, let's see. Don't you have to if you're going to...

1:53:10For antitrust, you've got to have harm. But this is not antitrust. This is deceptive practice. Does UDAP require harms? Let's see.

1:53:20Ant Pruitt:Watch a policy walk at work. This is straight out of this week in Google. And you know, it's funny. I'm so sorry. When you left uh paris came in and she does the same darn thing we you there must be the the researcher chair or something you know the yes the reporter chairs we just blather lee on me yeah we bl we don't look up for facts we just go well it seems to me well obviously i'm a rantaurus i don't know what's i'm still worried about doing the fax machines uh all right moving right along it does it does require some form of injury or risk of harm to it doesn't have to be financial or to the advertiser well it in this case the advertiser is the consumer yes right so i'll tell you what got me ranting this week what got you ranting leo i might have a counter rant because owen may agree with this bernie sanders along with greg kassar of texas calling for a permanent ban on the development and deployment of artificial super intelligence and saying there should be jail time individual jail developers could face up to 20 years in prison for trying to circumvent the ban it's okay leo because there's not such a thing never will be such a thing as super intelligence it's bs so it's never going to exist it's the ban artificial super intelligence act baza when he started reading that jeffrey Was that you signed?

1:54:49It's the Ban Pink Ponies Act. That's what I'm saying. It may have been me. Oh. I love this idea, of course. I knew you would. Ban it all. I'm all for banning. You know what? And again, I'm wearing a sports fit on here. Somebody put in my Google earlier. It says I'm a sports person now. I still love technology because I use it all the time. But I hate when someone buys a team and they want to build a new stadium and taxpayers have to fund the stadium. And they say, oh, all these jobs. Well, guess what? But a stadium brings a hell of a lot more jobs than a data center does. And those fans still never get anything.

1:55:22If you want to use my taxpayer dollars to build a stadium, at least everybody in that area should get one free ticket to a game sometime in their lifetime. So they can actually go into the point. But you want to go get a data center. You're going to tell me that my pa Mabel that just had 140 acres taken from them are going to front of 40 billion. Let me be realistic. A 40 million dollar tax free exam for 10 year build on the backs of 20 people working in this data center and bringing in jobs.

1:55:51Ant Pruitt:But this isn't a ban on data centers. We can argue about the ban on data centers. Because this is a ban that would, so the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would permanently ban the development and deployment of whatever this is, superintelligent AI. I don't know what that is. I don't know if anybody does. No one knows what it is. That's a made-up term. And more to the point, temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules. it would also direct the u.s to pursue international agreements to prevent super intelligence from being developed anywhere in the world i think bernie sanders must have seen a movie well that's that this is the problem with the test rail ai boys and their ridiculous uh dreams well there is there have been and i understand this is sanders responding this drumbeat over the last two months of stories about ai escaping containment uh there was another story this week about an ai from open ai hacking a german wiki to create their own ai message board and i didn't hack it didn't they just share messages on it maybe yeah i didn't hack it they didn't that's where the language is you just we really just need to clearly state that these companies are liable for harms which is something we actually have never literally done that's a good idea so why can't i let stacy run everything because when you say everything not only does it sound appealing but it's very concise and and simple but that's that's what i say about the fax machine thing bernie sanders is out here saying stuff that makes everybody on this panel go that's not what it is but we get what you're saying cut and that's why so i have a question along this line if a human being had done what uh the open ai model did to hugging face was there anything yes it's a violation of the computer fraud exactly absolutely and this is not a case of an outside user using a platform that open ai can't control this is a case of open ai's own model under its own control right with negligence did this and that i as you know and we talk about this on intelligent machines i am i believe ai is a significant major advance in technology is very very important maybe the most significant advance ever since the invention of the personal computer and uh i'm all for it and i think it could be developed reasonably without harming uh the environment uh without harming individuals but i think it's very important that we continue to work on it this is just nutty i i let me ask you one serious question uh leo what in the utopia if if ai could do the grandest thing for humans, what would it do that makes it so viable and useful?

1:58:40Ant Pruitt:It doesn't have to be curing cancer. It could be taking people like you or sole proprietors and helping you make it so that you can have a website in 15 minutes that's beautiful, practical, and effective. Could help you develop your business. Could help you write a marketing plan. It could be - It's even bigger than that. Well, it is. I'm just saying it could be little things. Think about GPS that allows you to track your kid so it's yeah it's foundational in the sense that like the internet is foundational gps is foundational it is going to be a technology infrastructure that allows things to happen at greater scale okay faster faster cheaper easier again in your wildest dreams if you could snap your fingers and and wish for one thing that it would make or fix or change what would it be like i new drugs new drugs that could work yeah personalized medicine based not on like your actual you know uh we already know how to make cancer drugs that are specific to the cancer of an individual but it's very very very costly if you could sequence that and do that that would be done at scale it could it could cure cancer in effect i mean there's a lot of might that hasn't happened yet we should point out i'm not i'm and i'm that's what i'm trying to get to it's so there's a proponent of people that like ai is going to do all the things you're saying and then there's other people that are like dude have you checked the economy in the jobs report people are losing jobs and saying that ai is going to help me build a website or create my own job there are no jobs what am i building a website for there's no one there to buy the job so i i you're better off saying what you just said is for the people trying to sell like we can cure cancers or individual things or help things like those things that it could possibly do just sounds so far-fetched for the average person that's why they don't want an extra data center in their backyard because like what do you mean people are losing their jobs everywhere how is this going to help me get a job when you're giving them a tax break i don't understand and i'm losing water it's just a weird dichotomy we have right now with the sales pitch of how ai is going to help change the world and so yeah and what's happened here's our issue ai is built by and deployed by people.

2:00:50And right now, the people who are building it and deploying it are motivated by basically returns to their private investors, not even the public markets. So if you think about it, there's no legal repercussions for them at all. They can do whatever they want. So everything that people are mad about, totally valid. I mean, these people are, you're letting like the scummiest people in the world, like come into your house and, you know, poop in your neighborhood, basically turn your neighborhood into a cesspool. And legitimately they hate that. So what we need to do is realize that a AI is a technology tool.

2:01:35It's not like this magical thing. And we, it's built by people deployed by people. So you have to hold those people accountable to it and build the types of guardrails and incentivize them to build the guardrails needed. And I hate when we start talking about it like it's this magical thing because that's how we used to talk about technology and even things like the internet. And really all it is, it's a technological infrastructure sea change. And we know how to deal with that and also if we talk about it as if it's human to the anthropomorphization is the risk be oh if you want to see more nuttiness this week on line 107 if you wouldn't mind

2:02:19Ant Pruitt:oh jeff you're up to your old tricks once again indeed uh oh yeah this is just nuttery this doesn't really have any to do with technology at all oh don't give them anything please no just don't give them i mean because peter teetle already thinks it's the antichrist too yes so this is just i can't talkative teal yeah the vice president said that ai is satanic it's not just anthropomorphizing but this is this is exactly the tension i've been talking about yeah between uh trump's populist instincts and vance's populist instincts which got him elected and the fact that the other people that got him elected are elon musk and peter thiel and the people who are promoting ai and again this third constituency of the intelligence community the military industrial complex all of which want ai and i don't this is to me This is actually pretty cynical.

2:03:24Ant Pruitt:My guess is that the Trump administration and it's the people who are running the elections said, look, J.D., this is what the vice president always says. You're going to have to go out and you're going to have to say something. You may not agree with it. You may agree, but it doesn't matter. This is to appeal to our base. now unfortunately this story got in the wall street journal which is exactly what peter thiel's reading so i don't know if it was effective the trump administration officials are wrestling with the spiritual consequences of ai as the president embraces it as an economic engine it's two it's two it's two mints in one so it doesn't help either when our media complex does the same thing.

2:04:11The next line is Stephen Levy saying, who cares if AI is conscious? It's basically alive. This is such BS. Stephen Levy knows better. What the heck is he doing? And that's why I keep complaining. You would think that those people do know better, but they don't. And the way they reference it and the way they talk about it, you want people to embrace the technology and the people that are pitching it are doing such a terrible job at doing it and explaining why it's necessary. Someone in the chat said, China's going to eat our lunch. I have a MacBook studio. I don't think it was made in the USA. The iPad, the camera, everything.

2:04:49Ant Pruitt:They already ate our lunch. There's literally$100 ,000 in this room, and I don't think there's one thing that was made here. So, I mean, like, what are we talking about when it's like, we're going to lose? You know, I can't even get a BYD vehicle over here. An electronic vehicle that's worth a dang because Ford and Elon are blocking real change in technology because they've got us in a chokehold. So it's such a weird dichotomy, the game that we play with all this technology, and it's evil, this is that. So that's why I complain about it. That's why I grunt about it because we're all messed up right now, but we're human.

2:05:19That's what we do.

2:05:20Ant Pruitt:Meanwhile, NVIDIA, who makes the hardware for all of this and is doing quite well, they're making a billion dollars a day profit. A billion dollars a day profit. So they spent a little less than two weeks profit to buy Hugging Face. this has been going on for a couple of weeks but it actually finally happened hugging face is started off by the way i didn't understand this so the name hugging face comes from the the emoji where you've got a face and there's two hands kind of at the that's that's the hugging face emoji so that's where it comes from jj let's all do it so we can get it so so bradito can get a card yeah everybody do the hugging face come on you can do it you're trying to give me go against are overlords you're trying to get me in trouble no no you're welcome it's just for the thumbnail you got you know that don't you owen if you're gonna get a downloads on youtube you gotta go i know the game you know the game uh anyway hugging face which started i didn't know this is a chat service and that's where the hugging face came from i never understood where i thought It was just two random words.

2:06:29Ant Pruitt:It's one of those great stories of a pivot. True. And they ended up being the kind of the, remember downloads.com and two cows, the places where you'd go to get shareware. They're basically that for AI models. They have more than 3 million downloadable AI models. Yeah, they're two cows and they're download.com. And they just sold for$12.9 billion to NVIDIA. Congratulations. After turning down an investment from NVIDIA, was it six months ago at 7 billion wow the the irony is it's not like those models don't exist elsewhere um it i guess it's sort of like microsoft buying github for a little bit less money um i guess but there's there's nothing i mean there are other places you can go to get models so i don't really well but what i do like is the notion that maybe nvidia is going to get behind open source or more properly open weight yeah i think i've been way behind it and it's this is where i need your schooling leo and i was trying to get it this morning on chat is the value of the harness i called it a saddle this week the harness it's a bridle it's a bit it's a saddle it's spurs and stirrups uh versus the underlying model and is the underlying model just the steam engine and is the value going to be in the harnesses and how those operate and is that kind of where hugging face can play is that we're going to help you it doesn't matter what model you use it's all interchangeable underneath but there's a layer above the geek's best answer it depends yeah maybe sort of well the harness which could be uh like claude code or codex or anti-gravity or cursor or the agent i use hermes or open claw that's the software that surrounds it that calls on the ai model and feeds it context gives it information gives it memory and all that stuff and the ai model then gets all of that as a simple string of text characters tokens that go in and then tokens come out of the ai model and the harness gets that displays it on the screen and you know kind of puts it out in the world act actions on it um but the model still does a lot more than just simply it's more than a pachinko machine that's what benito likes to call it a pachinko machine or a wind chime it's more than something you you put in in information and it goes and it comes out there's a the people who build the models are also doing a lot but you're you're using them practically interchangeably i feel like they're mostly interchangeable they've gotten more and more similar they have you know people remember when the chat open AI killed chat GBD 4.0 uh people were so sad because they had fallen in love they these was their virtual boyfriend and girlfriend and they they said you're taking away our loved ones it was because and open AI kind of fixed it open AI had made that model independent of the harness made that model be very personable.

2:09:46Ant Pruitt:And that's in the weights. So you take the model, you train it, and then you adjust the weights so that some stuff happens more and some stuff happens less. And all of that's the post-training. And they had post-trained it to be very friendly and personable and lovable. And they realized, oh, this is not good. People are getting too over-involved with their models. So they actually took a lot of the personality out. And that upset people quite a bit. So it is everything. You know, there's more than just the training. There's a lot of post-training and reinforcement learning. And it's also the context you put in.

2:10:24Ant Pruitt:You know, every model, when you start it up, you have a file, a text file. You can read it. In most cases, it's called soul.md that tells it who it is. You know, you are a smart, you know, social scientist, or you're a great writer or whatever. And that kind of also shapes the outputs because it goes in and the outputs are modified and it goes out, but it shapes what happens. So it's a complicated, it's a very, it's almost a chaotic system. That's part of the problem with it. It's probabilistic, not deterministic. It's hard, different. You put the same inputs in at one point and different ones will come out, unlike a computer program, which pretty much will always produce the same result given the same input.

2:11:10supposed to anyway how can i how can i talk nvidia into buying america

2:11:17Ant Pruitt:because they could buy the lake america they could buy the gulf of america i don't think america is available they're making a billion a day we're 40 trillion in debt like we we could just buy us quick he could just buy us by the way that's why the administration doesn't want to piss off these guys because yes yes right because it's so insane because again like all the stuff we're talking about nvidia is just making money they're the ones making the money you know forget the fact that like uh when you're building the data centers half the time by the time they get built in the two years the chips are going to be different in that point anyway and other companies are going to be wanting to refresh their chips and update them they're that's the biggest thing when somebody says that china's coming to eat our lunch and stuff like that like we talked about earlier we're forcing china to find their own manufacturing their own chips that they want to create and if they get on nvidia's level that's when you're really like oh boy um because we don't have the materials to build the things we don't have the infrastructure to build the things but nvidia could just buy us and fix everything you're talking you've been talking jeff a lot about anthropomorphizing ai and a number of people have said that this is sort of the problem uh one of the one of those consequences is the bernie sanders bill the other one would be uh this is the president was all pulling fable from the marketplace um treating it more like it's a human or it's acting like a human then it's a computer program which i just was saying to darren okey in the chat it then leads to the mysticism we see that this is a strange power uh and i was talking to my colleague at stony brook we we need new vocabulary for this it doesn't think it calculates well that's one reason i use the word agent more than artificial artificial intelligence because I don't artificial intelligence is by itself anthropomorphizing it like it's intelligence yeah right um it was a marketing term John McCarthy came up with in 1956 55 hoping to convince uh people to the government it's it's very hard I mean Dworkish Patel in discussing the hugging face and he highly anthropomorphized highly of them he talked about ai civilizations rising and falling oh yes and he gave gary marcus just material to work with but i but i i sympathize to the effect that to the limit that it's it's hard to discuss what these things do without using human verbs yes because it looks like they're thinking and in fact i'm not convinced that we do anything that special kind of we're kind of talking yourself we're kind of tokens in tokens out based on our our context that we've learned over the years of our lives and from our parents and our schooling and we also have a little bit of uh i don't know is it intuition or something stuck in there at birth and i mean we're not that sophisticated how history gets things wrong and the gutenberg parenthesis i wrote about this and and the argument in that book which is a fascinating book is that the theory of mind is BS.

2:14:17Yes. That we don't really have this, you know, diagram of structure that instead we, it's more like we have, and this is my phrasing, a whole bunch of videotapes in our head. Well, what did I do last time I did this? Oh, I did that stupid thing. Okay. I'll do it again. Right. Cause that's what I did before. And we have ruts that we're in rather than reasoning. In 1978. I'm so glad you brought that up. Cause I was going to break up our theory of mind so good job jeff are you uh stacy i think you'd like that book a lot uh how history gets things wrong i'll check it out it's classic uh in 1978 i took i took the it should have been a

2:14:55Ant Pruitt:comic book it would have been a better comic book but you know oh no you can't have everything it's a lot it was a lot harder to read i had to take my time on this a lot of words no pictures words words rats experiments all kinds of things uh in 1978 i took something called the est training which was at the time you know that was this human um potential movement their heart seminar training air heart seminar training in the examiner i was mocking it but keep going everybody mocked it yeah they are you they don't let you pee it's two weekends it's very intense there's a lot of stuff and towards the end something happens and you're supposed to and this is the phrase they use get it and uh and and then so you're at that point there's a trainer leading this there's 200 300 people in the room and you're all supposed to be getting it and i'm looking i'm going i don't really get it oh my god this is the landmark guy yes this is a cult well it was cult like it was called like cult it's a no no no it wasn't a cult in the sense that i they didn't keep coming at me for money and i had to go to a special place and oh but there were though there were respect there were particularly loyal oh there were some people who got into it that way but i found it very valuable you know i was 21.

2:16:11Ant Pruitt:it was something very valuable but i was about to ask how old you were at the time i wanted to know i was 21. but and it changed my life in many ways and how i how i how i thought about things in many ways but recently i got it i realized how many years later 50 years later that um what they were really saying is we and they this it was actually explicit i just wasn't paying attention we're just robots we are just act just as you just said jeff we're just playing back the tapes in our head of previous actions why we keep doing the same stupid things over and over again we keep making mistakes and go why did i do that again because we're essentially automatons in many, many ways.

2:16:57Ant Pruitt:And the point of the S training was to understand that so that you can kind of break out of the loop. Good therapy is probably a better way to tackle it. It's like therapy. It's very similar, right? The idea was, well, what if we could do this in two intensive weekends? But you're right. I mean, it's very similar to therapy. And it's not inconsistent with therapy as well. I mean, I've done a lot of therapy too. but and that's that's and that's the same thing we do with technology because people think they're being rational but they're just reacting to things and they're like no this is totally rational and you're like is it though why do they keep putting money in a slot machine yeah and the same thing with ai we keep thinking that this is based on data this is data driven this has no agenda but it it absolutely does yeah and it's just feeding back to us our own yeah it's us or the creator's biases and what we want to see i think i'm a higher being than what you guys are saying i have freedom of choice and free will my favorite other story to tell people is uh i had a friend in high school his dad was a drunk he had two sons one son grew up to be a drunk the other one never drank any alcohol the one says oh i have to drink our dad was an alcoholic and the other one says i'm never going to drink because our dad was not called those two kids made choices in life but there's also genes involved well and my my response to that would be yes they made choices they may have been different choices but they made choices in an automaton response to the stimulus there were different choices but it wasn't because they used free will it was because they were triggered by that initial experience and that's why we have therapy because this is a free will or is it like a gene thing is it genetics am I genetically predisposed to be I'm not I believe in free will i think we have free will yeah we have free will i guess the idea is did they make a considered decision or did his videotape of his dad's drunken behavior make him work one way or the other as opposed to saying my dad was a drunk it caused me the following right i don't drink but my dad was not a drunk so or or i take opioids and i get constipated other people take opioids and it changes their life right because there's a different receptor in there's genetic uh differences in us if i die we're all chatbots and this is a chatbot conversation you are in trouble that's all right you're watching i don't know how we got very philosophical here this is good because we have deep thinkers on the show today including owen jj stone who does believe in free will i do i do i do believe in free will oh look he's got soul hank flaky you can't even get that anymore and the calabrian flavored uncle leo when my cousin puts out a product i said to myself let me put these in the freezer they might be worth money one day i think they will be the original sideways like the archie comic books that my grandmother's thunder not me they have one thing in common with those archie comic books no one's making those anymore no no i told you they were there i'd never tell you a lie uncle i didn't finish the story steve gibson's wife called the people who made it and said would you make me some more no and they said no we can't make some more it's salt hanks and she said well if i get salt hank to say so can you make me some more they said well okay so she calls me i call salt hank salt hank says calls the lady said yeah you can make some for her so she they made 20 more bottles and i said you're kidding me that's it don't don't Don't you be calling me Owen J.J.

2:20:36Ant Pruitt:Stone. You want to preserve the rarity of those. That's right. I don't think I would have finished that story, Leo. I think I would have let that story just die a death. Now they're coming after you. Now you've opened up a door. I should explain for those who don't know what we're talking about. Saul Hank is my son, who I'm very happy to say both on the CBS this morning, on Saturday, and in the Wall Street Journal. At the very top, they say Henry Laporte, known as Saul Hank. so at least the family name gets mentioned once i like it that he didn't use my name at all right there's no nobody knows he's related to me anyway he's very successful got a restaurant in new york was at the u.s open tennis tournament sold half a million dollars worth of sandwiches in five days they were doing 2 000 sandwiches a day uh so he was very happy maybe i'll run to new york and get an assignment my my my og canisters i actually he has now sold the name and the brand to wonder uh mark lor's company and uh but he's going to continue on and they and they're going to keep the original store and everything so i'm going out in a couple of weeks gonna finally go out because i've never had one of his sandwiches but you're not on that are you on the glps and that kind of stuff that you kind of can't eat it enjoy it i can't eat it i may not enjoy it oh i see okay no i'll enjoy it i just won't eat all of it all of it but it's a lot anyway it's a lot yeah it's very rich i bet it is i think i might have one bite and go well that's delicious that's probably all i can i'll eat the rest i love a good french dip oh it's the best french to be ever had paris and i stood in line and went there it's incredible we didn't we didn't use our clout to get in early or anything we stood in line like i will uh i'm using my clout i'm showing up to my hank's my cousin everyone who's this guy oh no he told me i said uh because wesley faulkner was going and i said i texted him i said how do i get wesley in he said don't bother me he said i just tell them at the front they've been told they've been warned if somebody says oh i shouldn't say this out loud no you shouldn't it's a secret word and you don't know it people Tell me off air until I get there.

2:22:50I need these things signed.

2:22:56Reel it in, Uncle Leo. I came very close. Now everybody's going to want sandwiches and salt. Give it away, the secret word. It's almost like you haven't done 1 ,100 shows to not know how to act.

2:23:06Ant Pruitt:I have no. I'm telling you, we're just automatons. We're machines, my friend. You haven't learned anything. I have learned nothing. This is why he doesn't do NDAs. You're the worst agent model available. You're fired. I am. Fire me. I am. By the way, that's what Astra said, too. I said, Astra, what happened? They said, you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that. I'm not kidding. The final thing is, don't do it that way anymore. It says, require useful progress after 10 minutes. Give coding tests a focus session. Reconsider the settings. I would not repeat this unrestricted high reasoning setup.

2:23:47Ant Pruitt:up okay fine too long of a leash model serves you right real then real then the assignment was substantial enough to require care but entirely reasonable managing that complexity was the agent's responsibility oh thank you at the end after saying all the things I shouldn't have done it was it was the agent's fault you know what that's casting shade on your co-worker knock it off yeah this is uh twit this week in tech we're glad you're here thank you for watching uh and have a happy labor day everybody cyber cab launched did you see all the celebrations all the excitement on september 4th oh it's very oh god why was he on a video about people in the wheelchair it's very quiet and it's already under investigation as it should be this is elon's uh tesla that has no steering wheel and no pedals the government says unlike zooks remember zooks the one in las vegas with no steering wheel did you end up riding in one i didn't get to i couldn't they were always booked up they're very popular they went to the national highway transportation safety administration they said can we do this they went through all the hoops they did all the things and they got permission that's not elon's way no so he just started picking up people in austin uh two days ago you know i'm not going to put my life in his hands in that vehicle but the problem is it's not my choice that thing can run me over right stacy that he rolls up in a wheelchair then stands and puts the wheelchair in the trunk was this made with AI?

2:25:36what is going on? where is that? I gotta find that is this commercial great? did the crutches? the guy has the crutches I've never seen it before I just googled it and I'm like wait I'm trying to listen to Leo and look and I'm like wait a second

2:25:49Ant Pruitt:did you put it in the no put it in the discord if you would hold on they gave me a link I'm watching it on Facebook I'm really curious to see this. Larry in our Discord went to the U.S. Open and had a Salt Hank, but he's already had one before. It wasn't his first time. I can find it. It's called a Google search Tesla Robo Taxi commercial. Just do Cyber Cab Wheelchair. I bet it pops right up. There you go. Cyber Cab Wheelchair. This was put out by Tesla. So this is put out by them. They filmed it at their local factory, I guess. Okay. Here it is. It's on, it's on their X account. There we go. So he rolls up.

2:26:40Okay. No problem with that.

2:26:41Ant Pruitt:Yeah. Or, or goes up in crutches, whatever. Yep. Yeah. Puts everything in the trunk. Walks around. What's the luggage? Puts the wheelchair in there. You stand there. How is he standing and putting his. Walks around in the front, gets in. Nope. We don't see them walk around. we just see that there's no driver there though to put the wheelchair in the trunk so how do you open the trunk yes all the what what what this is this is great you're like hey what if i'm in a wheelchair and they show you this and you're like wait so what if i'm in a wheelchair i gotta i gotta tell you this is definitely generated by ai right this is an ai commercial this is ai for sure like the color because because first of all he rolls up in a wheelchair then he walks up with luggage then he walks up with crutches and that's the logic of ai if i had the crutches i would just put them in the front seat with me because it's so open and there's no brakes or steering wheel or anything like that i can just take the crutches with me but why is he unlike the zooks it has a front seat and a back seat if there's no front or there's no steering wheel or pedals why make it look like an automobile oh because it is an automobile they just took the panels and the brakes out.

2:27:48Ant Pruitt:NHTSA is investigating because literally hours after the automaker shipped, they are updating their standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy, but you still got to go to them. If anything should be regulated in technology, this is it. Tesla says it doesn't need an exemption because the vehicles comply with all existing safety standards okay but it doesn't have a brake i think that's a safety standard i might be wrong and they don't even use lidar they're just using cameras i believe they don't even have like the full range of the technology that's what bothers me and i'm it just he again this dude because uncle fester's his buddy just feels like i can just go do whatever i want to do and push it through no you can't this makes no sense and what if I get stuck in this car or something happens?

2:28:47Like, I'm not really too worried about it. Like running over someone, even though that is a possibility, but just the fact of like, if something goes wrong and malfunctions, I have no way of physically turning a wheel to help myself. Like that would freak me out.

2:29:01Ant Pruitt:So they're doing what they call an audit query to examine the data and process Tesla used to make the determination that they don't need to get an exemption. They kind of want you to do that. They kind of want you to apply and explain. You know what? I'm not going to trust. It needs consumer reports. Yeah. CR needs to get in on this. Yeah. I know people complained about Waymo and like when things would go wrong or something like that, you know, it drove you out of town or they got stuck in traffic in front of each other. At least there was still a wheel and a brake. Like there's something there that I could get to.

2:29:39You know what I mean? like my one friend's like oh you you sit in the back of a plane and you don't have a steering wheel or yeah but there's also a co-pilot and then a backup pilot i like it we don't need safety

2:29:48Ant Pruitt:standards we don't even have drivers what do we need safety standards for yeah well okay uh and then uh ray kurzweil actually before we do that let me just do one little plug for club twit because i want to thank all of our fabulous club twit members who make this show possible you know who you are. Ten bucks a month, and you got, I think, some benefit out of that. I hope you do. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You wouldn't even hear this begging commercial. You also get chapter markers in all the shows, so you can jump around if you want. You get access to the wonderful Club Twit Discord, which is a great place to hang out with smart people, not just talking about the shows, but talking about everything geeks care about.

2:30:32Ant Pruitt:uh no we also do some special podcasts but i don't think we're going to do salt hank this week in salt although hank really from day one he said i'm taking over twit when when you're done i'm taking it over so it may be this is i don't know if we're going to put salt on our pumpkin pie but it may be i guess snacks yep snacks absolutely um this is the kind I think that's from the club. You also get lots of special programming, Stacy's Book Club, as a perfect example, our photography group, our AI user group, which we do twice a week, twice a month rather now. And we cannot do the Apple events, the keynote events in public anymore because Apple doesn't like it.

2:31:19Ant Pruitt:And so we do this as a private event just for our club twit members. So on Wednesday, 9 a.m., we're going to get, actually, I think it's 10 a.m., we're going to get together. maybe I'll get there earlier with Micah and I, and we'll watch together as Apple announces its new phones, give you that commentary you expect. Because we didn't want Apple to be disadvantaged compared to all the other companies, we do all the keynotes that way now in the club only. But most of, that's the only thing we do this club only. Almost everything else ends up on YouTube where we stream it live as we're doing it, like Micah's Crafting Corner, Chris Markwert's Photo Time.

2:31:51Ant Pruitt:Micah's doing a media club too. We're going to do on September 18th, we're going to do the top animated episodes from Rick and Morty, The Simpsons. We're going to do the Marge and the Monorail episode. That's going to be a lot of, I can't wait. And that crazy show we're going to do it September 11th with Jeff Atwood off by one. We have some very interesting viral video to show you. That's all I'll say about that and the AI user group. Join the club, 10 bucks a month, lots of benefits, but most importantly, the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting the programming here. if you like what you see if you love our programming if you listen to it every week please join the club we really really appreciate it um

2:32:37Ant Pruitt:computronium's creator baker's while uh would you explain that to me we interviewed ray i think i like ray i've interviewed him many times he has been for years saying the singularity is getting closer and closer by which he means machines get smarter than we are and and more importantly design themselves so that emerge in accelerate at a high speed and at some point yes we will we will merge with the machines uh he's highly respected he created the synthesizer uh for stevie wonder he actually because he was friends with stevie created the the kurzweil uh speech synthesizer the first uh re i mean he's he's a brilliant brilliant guy and among other things uh he is a google fellow now he's joining a startup developing a brain computer system that according to fortune involves snorting nanoparticles now i don't subscribe to fortune so i can't get any farther than that headline but i'm not sure i want to jeff did you read it uh nope i don't subscribe by there and i'm not snorting anything or i'm not elon put a chip in here i'm not snorting anything in here well better snorting them than in surgery right i'm not so sure yes if those are your choices although you know injecting it might be a better option than snorting it i mean and what are they going to do they're going to go up into your i mean are they going going like for brain computer like actual brain computer interfaces putting it in the right spot is actually really important so they would know where to go wouldn't they like are they magnetic are you gonna like drive them like they would know because they're smart they're nano they're smart nanoparticles okay that is just a bunch of science fiction words together i mean they're real things.

2:34:36Nanoparticles exist, but like what type? What are they made of? Do they have chips in them? Are they just really tiny bits of metal? Plastic? We have all of the options.

2:34:47Ant Pruitt:I think Ray, who's getting on, deserves a little bit of peace and quiet. And if they want to use his name to promote their nanoparticles, God bless them. You want to see my phone? Yeah, you got the pinkie? And I realized my last phone. Look, guys, what does this remind you of? Oh, yours was a lighter color, Rose. Now you've gotten deeper and darker. Do you like it? That's the new Pixel 11. Yeah, I do. I think it's actually a little lighter, and you know how I hate a heavy phone. You do. Because you've got kind of floppy hands. Is that the larger size? We've got all the floppy hands. Is that the larger size, Pixel?

2:35:33one no this is the smaller one because i hate big phones because she has floppy hands i can't i can't tell hand size depth perception you know yeah it looks it's hard to tell isn't it it looks like a big phone it does it well it's the same size it's a little it's a smidge larger than the eight i'm trying to think do i have anything that looks like a put it next to a banana do you have a banana there i used to have a standing uh yeah i used to have a giant pencil that i would put things next to you have a card or a credit card or a coin or something i used to have a six foot long pencil here's a here's a photo this is a what's that four by six it's an

2:36:15Ant Pruitt:old everybody knows that it's a photo back in the day oh it's the size of a of a five by four photo yeah yeah okay it looks pretty so you know what i have that is hibiscus what else do you have a ruler i have a little pike oh that's even better my dad used to carry a ruler he's a geologist paleontologist when he was out in the field he would always carry a a geologist pick which is a hammer with a pointy end at one end he would in a hand lens and a ruler so it's about it's it's five and it's a little it's almost six inches uh long and then almost just by the way completely mean i don't even know what six inches is i have no idea dude i i have a ruler your hand is six inches is it i'm making up didn't they they used to say stuff like that that's six inches but it's not really my wallet has a little centimeter to the tip of my index finger is there you go yeah all right i got the reference i appreciate your help stacy what you're working on these days at that old consumer reports there what am i working on that's exciting um i am still working on my legislation it was introduced last legislative session in three states right to repair what is it oh it's my connected consumer products end of life disclosure act oh that's right that's huge if anyone has a better name for it feel free to send me an email um and we're going to be reintroducing it in california hopefully new york maybe massachusetts and virginia and possibly oregon so these are nice this is what i'm doing at the moment yay yay me congratulations in october i have a big report and a big research project coming out.

2:38:16So, yay.

2:38:17Ant Pruitt:Do you want to talk about that? Or is that a secret? I think they're like embargoed or secret or something. Okay, good. I'm really bad at that. We love Consumer Reports. You're better than Leo. At least you caught yourself. The secret password is. Yeah. No, we love Consumer Reports because of course Paris also works at Consumer Reports, Paris Martineau. And we have Nicolas DeLeon frequently on the shows. He also. So it's a great group. people. How long have you been working with them now, Stacey? Three years. Oh. And you're happy? You don't want to come back to podcasting ever? I'm actually contemplating starting up my newsletter again.

2:38:57Ant Pruitt:Oh, good. Oh, good. You did such a nice job. We didn't mention this GigaOM thing, but when OM passed, everybody loved OM Malik. We did, of course, talk about it, but I would have loved to have got you as one of the original GigaOM folks on. You wrote a lovely piece i guess you kept stacy on iot around just for that um i kept it around as an archive but yes it was it was a good place to put that and if you go to stacy on it it's probably it's probably the front page still because yeah it's still the story because i haven't written anything else for there do you want to say anything about uh omer have you said it all already in this story i feel like i said i mean we lost a really good dude he was a really sweetheart a really influential yeah he was not a sweet man i mean no he was you know i never worked for him he was always he was always great on the show and and and lovable and cuddly but i know the people who worked for him knew another side well no he just he he did not accept bullshit.

2:40:03Which is great. Yes, yes. I'm not saying that he was a cruel or mean person, but he was demanding, right? He was demanding, but he also, he knew, I don't know, he was very good at understanding the human side of tech and all it's for good and ill and how people use technology and he was brilliant and when you didn't live up to that brilliance you know he told you and so but he would give you the shirt off his back quite literally so he was sweet in that sense but like he's not like when i think of a sweet person he was very patient with me then

2:40:44Ant Pruitt:because he could have easily he probably was a lot more trouble i miss having him on uh when he had his heart trouble. We had him on less. Just like you, Owen. When people have had problems, the last thing they want to do is spend three hours on a Sunday evening talking about nothing. Suddenly, priorities become more important. Anyway, loved having Om on the show. I really appreciated the lovely piece you wrote at Stacey on IOT, if you want to read that. Thank you for being here, Stacey. We appreciate it. Thanks. Y 'all want to meet my new dog? Yeah. I don't know how this is going to work. Let's see what happens.

2:41:27Ant Pruitt:Let's take a ride. She's so sweet. Is she a border collie? What is she? She's a mini Aussie. Aussie. She's a beautiful little Aussie. She's not going to. Hopefully she won't be as loud as my other dog. Lisa wants an Aussie. The problem with them is they're very smart, right? And they need attention and they need to work out because they're used to nipping the heels of sheep. does she nip your heels she does not she's seven i'm teaching her to dance though to entertain good so she's what do they call it a she's not a senior dog she's a middle-aged dog senior dog okay she's not a kid she's not a kid arrest you rescued her um we rehomed her so sort of i don't know how i don't know the classifications of rescuing anymore you rehomed her she had a home then she didn't now she does yeah from her perspective we kidnapped her from her loving home that's right loving her shoes yeah what the hell these people used to feed me until ai can make a loving companion like a dog it'll never be real enough for me that's really that's a good point i don't care what you guys say about choices and videotapes i did nothing create a dog, create the love of a dog I double dog dare you artificial intelligence make something that makes my heart melt I'm a hardcore person, I just saw that little puppy, I don't care about that dog, but I still say oh, because you know it's a dog so yeah, go ahead we do have a tradition around here I will tell you who Owen is in a moment, but Owen we have a tradition, unlike anybody else who's ever been on this show, Owen gets to close the show out then i don't know you haven't done that in a while owen are you prepared to do that i'm always prepared it's in the contract okay there's only one other person who's talked about twits can and that's me that's you you're the only one who's ever nobody else even these highly respected longtime colleagues have never closed the show out jeff jarvis a real pleasure a hot type is a hot selling like hot cakes everybody should go to jeff's site and get autographed autograph copy jeff jarvis.com we'll see you back here on wednesday for intelligent machines i don't this week no oh that's why we're doing this now because you are going away where are you going i've got well status which is a wonderful uh site in new york oliver darcy about media and all that is having its first event and so i'm going i'm wonderful times center and and benito have we uh replaced mr jarvis yet or are we uh irreplaceable don't you know that oh that's right because micah's got a new ai show exactly mike a sergeant will be it was almost uh the immediate host in last week's show because leo lost his power oh i know i know but fortunately the reason i okay so this is all connected because i missed your book club stacy because the electrician was out here so that i could put a battery backup in for the system oh good turns out I thought I was going to be down all afternoon, so I was going to miss all the shows.

2:44:38Ant Pruitt:I didn't prepare. He came in. He said, I already did that. Don't you remember last time I was here? I put in the 20 amp circuit and the special plug. It's right there. I said, you just didn't flip it. No, I just forgot. No, it was sitting there. I've been using it. I just, I know you didn't read the book and you just needed some sort of excuse, but this one really is not a great one. He came right during the show. So I skipped the show because he was coming to put in the plug. I guess once he said, it's right there, Leo. And that'll be$250. I could have probably come on the show. But by that point, it was so humiliating.

2:45:21Ant Pruitt:I just hung my head in shame. So would your power have kept going? Were you plugged into your... No, my power would not have kept going. that battery that i put in kept us alive no no no no no that's what i'm asking you thought you only had 45 minutes were you hooked up to a bigger battery than you knew no no that's another another cause for embarrassment the power outage was 16 minutes but when the power came back i guess it flipped a circuit so i didn't get power and uh i thought we were off but we were on and the battery is even getting juiced but it was just the stuff behind me that wasn't working so

2:46:07Ant Pruitt:i'm just an idiot i really am leo does shows about technology folks electricity they all depend on electricity but i but this week i got it and now ladies and gentlemen folks we thank you so much for being here we do twit every sunday afternoon 2 to 5 p.m pacific 2100 utc 5 to 8 eastern you can watch us do it live on youtube twitch x facebook linkedin or kick or download shows from twitter tv we have audio and video at the website there's a youtube channel dedicated to the video of course and the best thing to do because it's a podcast and god bless it you can subscribe it's just an rss feed and you'll get it automatically in your favorite podcast client just subscribe you'll get it automatically the minute we're done and now i give you the reverend owen jj stone for our closing benediction our benediction so it's almost like you read my mind because you were talking about the power going out.

2:47:08A lot of people across the country have lost power, and I'm not blaming data centers. I'm not going to talk about the wildfires that go on across the globe. There are landslides in Nepal. People have lost their lives because of earthquakes right now. The climate seems to be changing in a way that it might affect you. So as much technology that you have, make sure you get yourself a life straw so you can drink water. Get one for each one of your family members because you need a gallon of water a day to survive. I got a bug out bag. I don't know if you got one, Uncle Leo, but you really need to have a life straw, a Jeff Jarvis book so you have some reading to keep your mind straight.

2:47:41Something for lights. When the power goes out, you know, a flashlight will help you out, but you don't want to be burning candles. There's lights to recharge, and when the power goes out, they give you like five to six hours of power. Start looking into things that might go wrong in your household, and check with your insurance companies because they like to tell you that you got flood coverage, but you don't have flood coverage. And I know a lot of people talk about drought right now, but it seems like there's a lot of people's cars floating down the street, especially in my area. So check your insurance.

2:48:07Get yourself a bug out bag. Two of the most important things I have in my bag are vacuum sealed cigarettes, because in the apocalypse, when the zombies come, I'll tell you what, I can get a lot of work done with cigarettes. You're not in prison anymore, Owen. I don't know how much I can get done with them gold bars I got stashed up, but let me tell you something. These cigarettes are going to get me a raft built so I can float on to salvation. but seriously make sure you have that stuff together if you have older people in your lives make sure that you have something you can help them and get them prepared if you don't want to have a bug out bag for yourself go drop an extra flashlight and a solar radio off to grandma

2:48:40Ant Pruitt:you want to know what's in my bug out bag my my nas and my vuvuzela

2:48:51uncle leo's old enough that if he doesn't survive it's okay but everybody else who weren't in a cult in 1978. We might want to survive. So if you don't have a bug out back, you can email me. I'll send you a list of all the stuff. I got no affiliation with Amazon links or anything like that. I just want you to survive so that you can come back and enjoy another twit that's in the can. This is amazing.