Joanna Stern is PROBABLY Not a Robot

18:39Marques Brownlee:Wait for 5.7. Yeah, exactly. 5.7, 5.5 with the image better than this, you know, nano banana. Sentence that didn't exist a year ago. Right. Nano banana is better than my five point whatever. I want them to tell their person in their life that isn't super deep in, you should go read this book because it summarizes and gives you a really good understanding of what AI could do for you. OK, yeah. I do also want let me look at this person nano banana nerd I want you to also buy the book but you could buy it for a friend there is a lot of uh I guess there's the two versions of the way people think about this future I always have my own nuanced version of this which maybe we'll get to but there is clearly a lot of positive use of artificial intelligence especially in things like pattern recognition like in the medical field like we talk about oh it'll look at this uh MRI It'll look at this tons and tons of data in a way that a human can't and find a pattern.

19:36Marques Brownlee:And maybe that actually means something that we didn't know about before. So there's a ton of upside. But then there's also a bunch of downside. And you hear stories about this all the time, about the chatbots talking crazy to people, about all sorts of other negative things. How do you think about the positive versus negative tradeoff of all of our lives being filled with artificial intelligence? I wish that I had a better answer at the end of this book. I mean, you should still read the whole book. And spoiler alert, I don't have a better answer at the end. But you should still read the whole book, even you, Nana Banana friend.

20:05Similar to any other tech tool, and I know you've made this point in your videos, there's going to be good and bad. And so, like, there is a very good chance this is totally worse and has far more negative consequences than any other technology. Like, I feel like I sound like Sam Altman sitting here.

20:26Marques Brownlee:Yeah, but. But. I need to learn how to do, like, a great Sam Altman impression. like he thinks so thoughtfully off to the side. You know, you study people when you interview them. Oh, yeah. You always watch a bunch of interviews of other things they've talked about before and then you realize they're going to do the same thing. Yeah, it's like looks up really thoughtfully. Does a few calculations. And then tells you the good news.

20:51Like the job displacement is real and people right now, I mean, I just started this new media company and the amount of incoming I have from young people out of college who just can't get a job because they feel like AI has taken over these basic tasks, whether it's video editing, whether it's design, writing, that feels real. And people are furious about it. And they're like, why do we need this technology?

21:18Marques Brownlee:It's hard to answer now. And that's the point of being in this moment of time. I have my nuanced take, which I say it kind of relates back to smartphones. I saw like the time before smartphones where I was like playing around with the VHS camcorder and there was a bunch of different tech and then, you know, smartphones came along and they brought all these different technologies into this one supercomputer in your pocket. And it's gotten really, really, really good and also it's sort of slowed down in improvement. And I have a hard time picturing a post-smartphone world, meaning we've moved on from this form factor of the rectangle in your pocket to something else.

21:54Marques Brownlee:a lot of these big tech companies are trying to prepare themselves for a post smartphone world what if it's a glasses thing what if it's a computer on your face so they're all trying that stuff but I personally still have a hard time imagining that the smartphone isn't the center of that universe do you have a hard time with that or do you feel like we could just move on from smartphones I have a picture at the end of the book bring it back to the book okay we can we get a tight shot of that yeah so for audio listeners there's a then and now and a soon is exactly what i was talking about yeah the then is someone sitting down in front of a computer with a tower pc the now is just holding the supercomputer in your pocket and the soon is this girl some cool glasses on which are that's you yeah yeah with which is clearly uh smart that's super cool smart girl yeah and that's the soon that's the soon so that's soon post smartphone post smartphone not alongside the smartphone alongside you know what actually we need to revise this illustration in addition number two the the phone is in her pocket okay or in her purse or you know it's sitting in the car or something it's close by yeah um because the phone powers this and i one of the reasons i well if you read all of this text here it basically says we went through this but we didn't lose these other things right i mean we don't well actually i was just by your desk you do still have like a giant tower maybe not for long but i do maybe Maybe not for long, but, you know, yeah, sure.

23:19You're going to get like a Neo. It's going to power everything you do. We still have these, right? So we have this long history of tech where things don't get replaced. They just, we get added.

23:31Marques Brownlee:We get augmented. Augmented. And our focus shifts, right? I mean, certainly the smartphone and this idea that the smartphone will be replaced. I totally with you. This is, I can't see it ever. Like this is, like the devices keep getting more perfect. It knows everything about us. It fits in our pockets. It's we get to put it down and then pick it up, which I think is actually something we don't think about a lot, but it's super important. And then there's obviously all the thoughts about how often you pick it up, how often you put it down. But the face computer, maybe there's a world where you use the face computer a lot and you use your phone a bit less because it's more convenient.

24:03Marques Brownlee:You take photos and videos with it. Maybe you talk to it, but you then check the the rectangle in your pocket a little bit less. But that's still the thing that has all the power, all the best compute, all the best form factor. So I just, I don't know. I don't see it going away. Okay, so in the book, I write a lot about the wearables. And this is perfect segue. So we'll talk about this one. Did you ever try this out? No. This is the B. This is the B. Okay. Amazon actually ended up buying it. It looks kind of like a Fitbit. Yeah, the hardware's unremarkable. It's fine. But this I wore for most of the year.

24:38And it has a microphone. And it records everything you do. Right now, I press the button and green means this is recording. And so everything that's being said goes to Amazon's cloud. They transcribe it. They pull it back down. They get rid of the audio. And then I get a summary of our conversation. And it also gives me to do's about our conversation. So if I've told you like Marquez, I'm going to apply to be the New Jersey one tech reporter. Number one. Yeah, I don't.

25:08Marques Brownlee:Top three. I actually meant that it's the channel name. I don't know. Is there a New Jersey TV network? There might be. Yeah. Anyway, this will all be in there and it will say you need to go apply to be the New Jersey number one tech correspondent. Right. Everything from this conversation will have been summarized by I by AI and it will give me this crazy to do list, a detailed to do list. And you can keep this on all day and it happens. Yeah. It's basically another brain in a way. Right. I'm outsourcing my memory. I don't need to remember what we did here. I don't have to actively go and put that in my to do list.

25:44Yeah.

25:45Marques Brownlee:Yeah. We were just talking about this. Was it last episode they were talking about this of I already sort of augment part of my brain in a way where I've just given up on remembering certain things. And I use right now it's a task app. And I just I have to do. I immediately take out my phone and I open the task app and I write it down just to make sure I don't forget because my memory is not perfect. and everyone is willing to draw the line in the sand in a slightly different place about how much they're willing to augment or offset their own brain. When you're going all in on everything, do you feel like it's making you, I guess we thought about this as less smart or less useful?

26:24Marques Brownlee:Less human. Yeah, less human. Does that feel bad to not use your brain as much or is it convenient and you can do all sorts of other random stuff you didn't think about before? There are moments where you're like, oh don't worry about it my bracelet got it yeah like I don't have to worry about that and that's nice kind of that's nice kind of right because there are certain times where you know you're missing things there's of course the flip side where it's like I don't want to record everything I don't want to live in my own surveillance state yeah and what I need to remember to do is not that important it's like change the filter water filter in my house yeah but if it's unimportant I'm gonna forget well that was one of the findings in here is that I say like especially to my wife like I say I'm going to do all these things and I never do them or don't it's not I don't ever really do them but um also I just don't have I don't remember to do them right um and so I think this idea of some passive computing that is on us but works hand in hand with the smartphone is coming I mean and well I'm going to do something next because I want to I want to get devices.

27:34Marques Brownlee:Yeah, I'm willing to give them a shot. This is my thing. And I know that the main trade off that I think I think the most about, and I'm probably a lot of people watching think about is the trade off between the data and the privacy and the convenience. And it's almost like a sliding scale. The more convenience you get, the less privacy you get. If you're going to have it remember everything you said and give you a summary of it, it has to listen to a lot of what you're saying. And it's going to be super convenient because it gives you that back in functionality. And so how far do you want to slide that?

28:03Marques Brownlee:You know what? I'll let it listen to everything. I'll let it see everything through my face cameras and I'll let it hear everything through the microphones and then I'll be the most productive human ever alive. Or the other side of that, which is I just want it once in a while just to remember one or two things and that's fine. And I think that's going to be the calculation going on at every tech company, right? At Apple, at Amazon, at Google. If we're not providing a great tool and utility, people are not going to deal with the privacy tradeoff, right? So the glasses, I think, are a great example.

28:38Right now, not a lot of people don't trust the metaglasses, but there's a good enough utility there, especially on the camera front, right? That we're willing to put these cameras on our face in, I mean, I use them in specific situations, right places I wouldn't want to be holding my phone and so there's a good enough utility there and a good enough benefit but once you start I don't know always recording or always having those glasses on what is the benefit you need to prove that and that's the conversations that I'm sure meta apple etc are having about what is the features that we can build in here to make that

29:18Marques Brownlee:privacy trade-off work yeah yeah every company has to has to find a different place for that line in the sand that is also one of my i guess it's more it's less of a theory but it's kind of proving out which is that apple is not winning the ai race but because they've basically not competed at all they it's come around the other side where people like that about them and they can focus on being the hardware that we run the ai stuff on at some point um but they have had a focus for a long time I'm on the privacy. And because of that, they do not offer as much convenience. See Siri, Apple intelligence, et cetera.

29:56I actually don't mind on the Apple intelligence stuff. I think you're totally right. If Apple doesn't provide me a large language model to talk to in a way, I don't care. Yeah. But Siri is so atrocious. It is so terrible. It's pretty bad. That it can't do the basic things that were really been promised. And I talk to Siri all the time.

30:16Marques Brownlee:Yeah. Still. Yeah. I mean, what other choice? I'm like using CarPlay. I mean, we have you probably have deep thoughts on this, but it's just a different podcast. Let's cut it there. Or like I need Siri to just play a song or tell me some basic information in the car or use my HomePod. Stuff that doesn't require a ton of data and information. I tell this story all the time. Every morning, I just want Siri to play NPR news in my bathroom while I'm just washing my face and putting on my makeup. Why do I have to ask five different ways and have to perfectly explain the name of the podcast? And that's like that is insane.

30:54Marques Brownlee:Yeah. It is 2026. So we had to growing up learn how to Google search. Yeah. Which was, oh, you kind of use certain words in a certain order and then you will find what you need. And as they got better, it became less important to know those skills. The AI is kind of the same way. Like you have to learn how to prompt it. You have to learn how to ask it to get a certain result. But after a while, they should be good enough that you don't you should just use natural language and it should just know. Conversational AI. We have the very basics on all of the other chatbots now. Yeah. And look, Apple's going to do this.

31:25They're going to do it this year. But I'm with you. Like, you don't need to give me a chatbot that knows everything, but just please like one that can easily play NPR in the morning or just tell me the weather or, you know, just just some of the really basic things. We got timers, right? I'm fine. Like, I spent a lot of time yelling at Apple about that. We got the timers. I don't mean to be really selfish and, you know, spoiled and say not. I'm very thankful for the timers, Apple. Multiple timers. Multiple timers. Right. but now we need a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I wanted to bring this to you on the podcast.

32:03I think it's going to be the hottest AI wearable of the year.

32:06Marques Brownlee:Okay, the hottest AI wearable of the year. Ah. It's a pin. It is a pin. And I know you've had feelings about pins, tech pins. Well, this pin is probably better than the other tech pin. Yeah, this is why I brought this. I wanted a review. I wanted the Marques review of the product that I made. Okay. So it just says some text on it. It says, verified human. I am not a robot. Now, I didn't have to do anything to earn this pin and prove that I'm a human. This is like a trust basis, like you believe that I'm a human. I've spent a few minutes with you today. I feel like you're a human. But one way I was going to have you test it is that if you poke yourself and see if you bleed.

32:47Marques Brownlee:That could be simul... I mean, I could simulate that. You're saying I passed the Turing test. Let's see. Let's see if there's blood. So far, so good. So far, so good. We gave Marquez the blood update last week, so. Yeah, that was a pretty solid film. Oh, I saw that room back there. I was worried about that room. They had to get that blood. Has any other guest made you bleed on this show? No, no. We haven't beta tested the, like, making me bleed live yet. But I feel like it would do a pretty good job. I mean, I would bleed for sure. Okay, well, then you guys have really advanced Marquez bot here to amazing potential.

33:24We have to make...

33:25Marques Brownlee:We have a great team. Yeah. Yeah, the back room is full of a bunch of non-working prototypes that are kind of just sparking, and it's a whole thing back there. What else are your other impressions of this pin? Look, it's been really rough for other pin makers out there, and this review means a lot to me. So the other pin that I think you're referring to also has the word human with an extra letter or something, I think, but it says human on it. that one had a bunch of other claims of things that it said it could do this one I don't think there are any claims of things that it should do it should just verify that I am a human which importantly should mean that if I'm a robot I should not be able to wear this like a humanoid robot should not be able to like don the pin maybe some security steps in there this is a decent review how about the battery life?

34:19Marques Brownlee:oh it seems like it'll never turn off which is really nice the tech that lasts forever is and this should last a really long time is underrated yeah wow this means i almost could cry this is huge i've i've worn like like two or three you know how uh the swag you get at tech events you always get a pin yeah like that this that's all i know you don't get the little apple pin oh the apple pin like wwdc or like random and we used to make a pin too like this this feels like right in line with like the nice. Well I really modeled these after I mean again you might be a little. No I don't think you're too young.

34:54Do you ever go to TGIF Fridays where they had like all the flair?

34:56Marques Brownlee:Of course. Yeah. My birthday was I was born on a Friday. Oh really? Yeah and so I used to go to Fridays on my birthday every year even if it wasn't a Friday. Just somewhere in New Jersey wherever I was. Yeah. I loved TGIF and they're like not around that much anymore. They're Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I get it. Can't miss. That sampler was amazing. The breadsticks went crazy. Yeah. But yeah, this is a solid plan. Truly one of the best samplers. Okay. Yeah. It means so much. Yeah. Can I keep this one? I now know how every tech exec - It seems like you have a bunch. Well, it's free for you. Oh, thank you.

35:30Actually, the promotion we ran for the pre-order was that you had to pre-order the book and I'd send you a free pin.

35:35Marques Brownlee:Okay. Which the shipping on the pin was more than the pin. Yeah. That's what we learned when shipping our pin as well. because we had to figure out the pin economics. But if you two want the, well, we had to get like a quote. I'm gonna have to put your quote on the pin review page. I know that's gonna cost a lot of money. Battery life seems infinite. Yeah. In quotes. Battery life seems infinite. If you would like to get this Marquez approved pin, you just have to pre-order and then you go to joannastern.com and get your pin. Now you know. Although I'm frightened because I'm actually like doing, well, my AI agent deals with all the orders and sometimes it messes up and it's a mess.

36:14Marques Brownlee:I'm sure it'll do great for this. Okay, on the bottom of - Is that true? You have an AI agent doing all of the backend on your - Yeah, on the pin. Oh, just the pin. Well, I mean, also it built my website and everything, but yeah. Whoa. Yeah. It's actually a beautiful website, I have to say. That I believe, that I believe. Yeah, but no, if you submit a form or you email, the AI agent puts it into the spreadsheet and then sends an email to my publisher to say there's a new pin order.

36:47So good, so good, so good.

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37:41Marques Brownlee:30th. Terms at aka.ms slash collegepc. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com slash brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. There's a little humanoid robot at the bottom of the pin. How do you feel about humanoid robots? I have so many thoughts. It's a whole other podcast. No, it's this podcast.

38:20Marques Brownlee:It's this waveform. This is the one. I really want them. It's weird because I feel like I'm really excited about this category because I've lived through so many new tech gadgets and hardware, and this is one that we've all seen for so long. We've seen it in cartoons and we've seen it in movies. And it's always this promise. And so now we like see them. They're really being made by these companies or Tesla or Chinese companies, which is my recent YouTube video. And we want them to work. But they don't. Yes. I know you also have thoughts of like, why is this form? Like, is this the right form? Yeah.

39:07But I don't even care. It's cool.

39:10Marques Brownlee:and it's so fun I do think it's fun I have this thing so like you said I don't know that this will be the most efficient form for a functional multi-purpose robot let's say it's in your home or something like that you just want it in your home and it does things like laundry and puts the dishes away and cleans stuff or whatever having it be an upright bipedal ten fingered thing with eyes and a head and stuff It is fun, and you do get that Jetsons feel or the futuristic, our C-3PO is a tall one, right, in Star Wars. It's cool, but it's also a little bit creepy when we anthropomorphize things that are clearly not human, almost like an animatronic friend.

39:58And it has to get through that, what's the valley called?

40:03Marques Brownlee:Uncanny. It has to get to that uncanny valley of being a little creepy before it gets to being really nice. And I don't know if I'm willing to deal with that. I have spoken to so many. I spoke to a lot of robotics experts for the book. And there's definitely this. There's a there's a two sides. There are the people that say we should have custom single utility robots that do the things that you're talking about and are really good at them. Right. And then there's a side that the world is built for humans. This is the form factor. This is what we look like. I've been thinking about this a lot. So I agree with that.

40:39Marques Brownlee:I also think that we as humans built the world around all of the shortcomings of the human form, and we can do better. Literally short. Yeah. Like we can't even reach things. Our arms don't extend. Driving is the perfect example for this, right? So you have a car. Let's say it's not a self-driving car. You could theoretically have a human, a humanoid robot sit in the driver's seat of your car and hold the steering wheel and press the pedal and drive it. That's one version of this solution. Now you have an operated car from a robot. But it still has the same blind spots. It still only has a set of eyes on the front.

41:15Marques Brownlee:It still only has the reaction time of things that it can see and hear. Or your car is covered in sensors, covers all the blind spots. It has this neural link that like maps all this information together, can see way further around all the sides of the car and has instantaneous response and doesn't have to move through the steering wheel and the pedal. And it's a much better self-driving car operated by a robot in that case. So even though, yes, we did design the car form around the human, I think that is actually a limitation that we can do better by designing the single use robots. So yeah, the world may not look the way it does in many years if we have a bunch of really good robots instead of the world like built the way it is.

41:59I love that idea. And I think I see it. I see you see it really clearly in the book when I I don't know if anyone in the world knows as much about laundry folding robots as I do.

42:08Marques Brownlee:OK, I'm going to see yes laundry folding robots. Have you talked? I have talked to so many. Yeah, I've also had a laundry folding robot in my house. Wow. Wow. And the interesting thing about the laundry folding robots talking about. Yes, there are those demos where it doesn't use hands. Right. The shirt goes through a different way. It goes through a conveyor belt. It folds, does these things. What the humanoid companies want to do and even some other startups that are doing some wacky things with laundry folding. They want to give it hands. Yeah. And they want to train it. They want to train it on thousands of hours of folding.

42:42Yeah. Right. So I had this robot in my house and it's just two robotic arms, but it doesn't – it's like clenching. I keep doing this. Like that's how they look, right? Mr. Grabs. They're like the grabs in like the, you know, in the arcade where it comes down and the claw that you don't get the free thing.

42:57Marques Brownlee:Which is actually – it's probably better for folding things. Kind of, but like – Some things. Some things. Yeah. If – there was a lot – I learned so much about the complication of folding laundry. It's really simple for us, right? And there's this idea of Morvex Paradox where things that are really simple for humans are really hard for robots and things that are really hard for robots are really simple for humans. This robot, like it struggles so much to fold because it doesn't have the hands. It doesn't have all of the right moves. Like when the shirt falls, it doesn't quite know it because every time a shirt falls, it looks different, right?

43:32It doesn't know where the arms are. It doesn't know where the neck is. It could also only fold T-shirts, which is a problem, you know, for, you know, if you only wore T-shirts, it's a problem for people.

43:42Marques Brownlee:We just had this argument last week on the podcast about how about how about just about how garments, the nature of fabric and garments are so complex that I have no faith that an ML model is anywhere close to understanding how they work. And that's what was proven by this. And so now you have millions of dollars going into solving a problem of folding garments with that are trying to simulate the human way of doing it. Right. Like you're and I found myself cheering this robot in my basement. It was two giant arms hooked up to a big laptop. It's got all these things. And I'm like standing in my basement.

44:17You can do it. You can fold my T-shirt in under 10 minutes. you know like why not create a robot that doesn't have arms that folds laundry a different way and

44:27Marques Brownlee:which we know some companies are doing yeah yeah this is yes and and i remember like talking in the in tesla factory about there are things that they have humans do that the robots simply can't do like when they have to connect like a hose for some system to another one it just sort of dangles and the robot just misses it doesn't like it's trying to calculate the position has no idea what to do the human just grabs it grabs it connects it and it's fine so there are definitely things that are probably forever going to be better for humans. But yeah, for the things that are like small, mundane tasks, like I don't want to clean.

44:58Marques Brownlee:Like we have robot vacuums. They aren't a human. It's just a thing that rolls around on the ground. That's perfect. That's all it needs to be. Pretty good. The single use robot thing, I think that gets stronger and stronger in my head every time I think about it. And I think for certain tasks, it's going to make sense. For sure, driving, right? That one's already here. It took a long time for us to get here. but a lot of these other single tasks that we want in our homes are just so hard like the dishwasher I know the scene of the Neo robot went viral of doing the dishwasher Struggle I mean because that's like a very like the dishwasher was built for a human I was laughing at your video for like a saw it took me like half an hour to watch the video because I kept pausing it and laughing so much because it was really it was tough I'm like thinking about it and it's fine that it's slow because I'm not doing it.

45:49Marques Brownlee:Yeah. So it can just happen in the background. But just watching the robot, like try to bend over at the waist. I thought it was when we were filming it. I mean, I was like, you know, you know, you're live in this moment. And yeah, it's like yelling at my producer, David, come over here. Like, you know, we can't miss this. It might fall. Got to get from like, I thought it was going to fall into the dishwasher, you know, and it was. Yeah. And last last week, we posted a first video. One of my first videos on my own YouTube channel. Marquez, I'm really trying to. Yeah. live in your we have a soundboard we have i i'm i'm aware you have a soundboard i'm surprised we haven't used it more here um it's very impressive soundboard i got you um grok context please it's a new one that's a new one yeah a new one um where was i going oh so i wanted to do this story on these chinese robots the unitree g1 that you see going viral everywhere on the internet.

46:43Marques Brownlee:Yeah, how is that? Well, video's doing pretty well, but most people are angry that I'm really talking about the fact that they're all coming from China. I mean, the thing that I wanted to talk about there was that we're letting these Chinese robots into the US and we're so worried about Chinese EVs and we're so worried about Chinese phones, but yet we're like, oh, let's let these giant humanoid robots that are 80 pounds and can do Kung Fu come into America. Like, that seems odd. And it's a really interesting exploration of why China is obviously ahead of the U.S. on manufacturing these because they're ahead of us on everything on manufacturing in terms of electronics.

47:19But what was just funny, you should watch that one too, is like the robot can't do anything. I mean, it can do some things. It can dance, which my kids love, and it can do kung fu, which my kids love. But other than that, it just like sat in my house doing nothing.

47:34Marques Brownlee:It can do choreographed things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is what I've seen about a lot of the AI promises is there's so much training left to do and there's so much learning left to do by the robots that we're sort of selling the promise of the future. I made the humanoid robot bet that there would not be a single humanoid robot shipped to a customer in 2026 that can do all the autonomous things. Oh, it can't. Oh, yeah. I think part one, you're wrong. I think they will ship. They will ship it. Do you think the One X is going to get shipped in 2026? I think that they will ship it to select few.

48:06I don't think that I will be.

48:07Marques Brownlee:But it won't do all the things. I don't think Marquez is going to be select few. No. Let's say this. If I get New Jersey packed. Yeah. New Jersey tech media packed right here. OK. If one of us gets the one X. We have to go. We have to share a New Jersey. 100 percent. Yeah. You know. You're welcome to try to ask it to do whatever you want. You're welcome to come to my house. Yeah. And sit with it in the car. It sounds like you want your humanoid to ride to drive your car. It's going to be really bad at that. We will shut down the town for that. Yeah. And so I think they will, to answer your question, Alice, I think they will ship them.

48:45Autonomous, zero chance, no way. Maybe it does one thing autonomously, which is like open the door. Yeah. It won't do that. Maybe it will do one task autonomously. Yeah.

48:58Marques Brownlee:Yeah, we had a... Actually, that's what we will do. You can control my One X from here in your VR headset. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll just start doing the dishes. Yeah. Through the headset with the handle. Yeah. That'll be great. We had a Amazon Astro bot here for like two or three, maybe longer three or four years. No, it's still here. It's still here. It's still here. That's so unfortunate. It's just unplugged. The poor thing. I had one too in my house. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So you're aware of how bad it is at most things. Like it would sort of just roam around being a security camera, which I guess is technically a successful, and it does what it says it will.

49:35Marques Brownlee:But all the other things it's supposed to be able to do, it would not be very good at. And then it would just kind of trip over things and get stuck on wires. It was this little robot, big wheels. It was just like a Lexan wheels to like play music. Yeah, that's the closest we've gotten so far. Yeah, and the whole idea of like, it would take the drink to the other room. Yeah. It made no sense to me because like it couldn't grab the drink. A person would have to be in both rooms. At which point you could just ask the person. Right. Right. Which. Yeah. Yeah. Made it a tough sell. Yeah. So yeah, I do.

50:09Marques Brownlee:I tend to think we are quite far from the humanoid robot future, but I'm curious to see how that plays out. If it'll be humanoid robots or if I'll be proven right, vindicated. It'll just be a bunch of specialized, smaller, really efficient, hyper adapted robots for individual tasks everywhere. Your dishwasher will just have an arm. Or the humanoids will just be in factories and industrial settings. Even that I don't think needs to be humanoid. Because even those are like connect this hose, like put the door on the car. At this point, it's just an arm. Like we have this robot arm in the studio, which we've put a camera on and we can teach it to do things.

50:45Marques Brownlee:But in this factory, it doesn't have to learn anything. It just has to grab the windshield and put it on the car. Grab the next windshield. Doesn't have to be shaped like a C-3PO. Yeah, I guess. And that's the argument that Amazon's made too, right? They've got millions of robots and they're not humanoids. We'll see. I'm very curious. All right. I have another question about just going independent as a media person. Because you've done now writing and video as part of like The Verge and Wall Street Journal and having your own YouTube channel. How does that differ? Like what was the choice to go independent and how does it like compare to being a part of a larger structured corporation?

51:24There's like 30 questions. Yeah, no, like, look, I'm only four weeks in. Well, like, I'm two months, three months in, but we just launched the YouTube channel. We just did that last week, two weeks ago, which, boy, you know, I'm seeing you've been really making, it's a lot of work. You've been working hard here.

51:41Marques Brownlee:Yeah, yeah, it is, you know, video production is one of those things where, you probably heard my octopus analogy, you end up wanting to do the video stuff, but there's a ton of stuff around the video stuff that you also have to do now, which is, you know, the behind the scenes, the inbox, the accounting, the bookkeeping, the insurance, all that stuff. I underestimated that. People told me, but I really underestimated that work. So but now I'm finally getting past some of that where I can actually get back to the content. I mean, I'm launching a book in the middle of all this, which do not recommend.

52:16But one of the reasons I did do this was because this book was coming out. I was going to be on things like this and I wanted to be able to talk about the new thing. So it's called The New Thing. It's called The New Things. Go subscribe. Joanna Stern is the YouTube channel. But a lot of it, like truly, you know, inspired by people like you for so long, I had been publishing to YouTube and I became really obsessed with videos on YouTube, you know, a few years ago at the Wall Street Journal because I started realizing this is where the audience is right the wall street journal is made the audience is amazing but they're older they have more money and i felt in many ways i was not being as accessible to

52:55Marques Brownlee:all the other people in the world that want to know about tech and so i started focusing a lot on my youtube videos at the journal and those would appear on the wall street journal's website too but i was really looking at the data on youtube yeah and more and more i wanted control over that. I want to control over the audience. I want to control over what we do because, you know, you have editors and editors are amazing. And I still have some editors that I'm hired and are working with at the new thing. But I just wanted the freedom to do even more stuff and weirder stuff. Yeah. Even weirder than what you are already.

53:32Marques Brownlee:Some of your I really like a lot of the interesting video idea concepts that you came up with and decided to pull off at The Wall Street journal. I wonder what even weirder looks like. What is your favorite weird idea? I don't know if it's even weirder, but like, I just don't have to ask permission to do certain things. Totally. You know? Yeah. And you get to sort of experiment with what works because it connects with the audience, but also just what you want to do and just to see if it works. Right. Yeah. What was the process for coming up with ideas for that audience? Maybe there's a little bit of a different audience for the new thing versus the journal, but how do you come up with an idea of what makes a good video?

54:09I mean, for me, it's just curiosity. Like if I have a question about something like this book, like I just, what does the world look like when AI is everywhere? Okay, let's go out and answer that question. Let me go and report that out. Let me go talk to people. Let me go test it. I mean, I think the major overlap that both of us have is that we test things. We don't just like go and talk to the companies making it. We wait for us to be able to use a lot of this. And so I want that to be a guiding principle of my coverage forever. um i think the the tough thing about tech is like you it's all overlapping now in so many ways right so if i want to not you know it's like oh i mean i don't want to talk about ai which is not what i want to do but i think that there might be too much ai coverage how do i figure out how to put those pieces together you know in stories that are still interesting to people because people can be very oversaturated right now with YouTube, AI YouTube.

55:05And that's, I don't want to only be AI YouTube. I really don't. Like, I don't want to be just, you know, every day, like here's 10 prompts that you can do to.

55:14Marques Brownlee:That channel is already out there. That channel is already out there. So I think my guiding process is like things that I'm curious about, things that are going to affect our lives with tech and, you know, not be super technical, but be technical enough that I can still talk to the people who love tech, but also like with the same thing with this book, the people in our lives that are still curious. We all use phones. Like we all use tech. How do I help make your life better and explain something to you? Yeah. Do you have a big project idea or a big video idea that you haven't come up, haven't done yet that you think you could now pull off?

55:50Marques Brownlee:Or is it all top secret? We need a little bit more time to get up and running right now. It's just like, Get through the book launch. Yes. Which is a lot of work. Get through WWDC. Okay. June. Yep. Yeah. I.O. is in there. I feel like September is going to be very busy. Usually ends up being a little chaotic. Yep. Yeah. So like, you know. Yeah. I kind of think of a, I've talked about this as like this, we have the waves of like the off season, the on season, like September will be on, October will be on. And then you'll have like, post CES January is a nice little, little resting period. and can sort of lick your wounds, reset a little bit.

56:25Marques Brownlee:What's this year? Yeah, this year it was like Samsung pushed back a little bit. It just kind of kept happening. But you can sort of think of random new ideas and fun stuff you want to try that isn't. I mean, I have a lot of those ideas. It's just figuring out the flow. I mean, I could pick your brain on for hours how you manage all of the different things and channel. And I'm also writing a newsletter. So like that's, you know, twice weekly newsletter, YouTube videos, shorts, events, all of those things and how do you think about it all cohesively i tend to go down the rabbit hole of that often yeah like content strategy and i don't have a newsletter and i'm not also doing like a book tour so i i'm mostly just focused on the content strategy for me is like long form versus short form or now short long form that's actually something that's a meta in my head uh three to five minute yeah long form videos kind of died in the last four or five years and why did they die?

57:22Marques Brownlee:Everyone's optimizing for a long watch time, but people want to watch our videos. Casey Neistat was talking to me about this and he said Marquez is doing this well. Yeah. I mean, I was doing long shorts, which were kind of weird. But I want to do short longs. But you just have an idea and like, you know what? People might want to hear me on this and it doesn't have to be 10 minutes. Exactly. I think we need more of that. Okay. There's a thought for the world. There's a thought. Free. I gave you a free pin. Yeah, and I gave you a free content strategy idea. Perfect. Amazing.

58:18Marques Brownlee:Real design experts and zero pressure. Just help when you need it. Shop up to 50 % off site-wide and huge savings on doorbusters right now during the Memorial Day mega sale at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, comedian and best-selling author Chelsea Handler gives her tips on independence and aging gracefully. I would argue that 50, now that I am 50 and I understand life more than I did when I was 30 or 40, is that you get so much more wisdom and you get so much more experience that you actually feel like you're beginning again.

58:59Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.

59:07Marques Brownlee:Where exactly do U.S.-China relations stand? The Chinese side came in feeling as if they had figured out how to work both with and against Trump. He was inclined to try to create moments of crisis. And then if they stood up to him, they were almost uniquely capable of making him back down. I'm Preet Bharara. And this week, Evan Osnos of The New Yorker joins me to discuss the Trump-Xi summit, which he reported on from Beijing. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

59:45Marques Brownlee:All right, I got a couple of rapid fire questions for you. Oh, gosh. Feel free to take - I hope it's about the magic mouse. I'm going to throw one in there about the magic mouse. I have two of them. Is this your, this isn't your mouse of choice, is it? It is. Okay, maybe this isn't rapid fire. Yeah, everyone is - Explain yourself. Everyone is rolling their eyes in the studio. Explain yourself. So you intentionally use, and it sounds like you have two, so you bought another magic mouse? Yeah, yeah. Because when I'm charging, I like to have them in and out. That's, now you know you could just get one mouse and just, right?

1:00:18Marques Brownlee:Like you could just keep using it while it's charging. Yeah, I love the scrolly feel, like the clicky part. I like it. Okay. Have you? Have I tried other mouses? No, never. Never. But do you not like the other mice? I was born only using the Magic Mouse. In fact, in 1995, when you were two years old and I had my first computer, I had a prototype of the Magic Mouse. They've always had... Johnny Ive sent it to me. They've had bad mice for a long time, actually. I unboxed some of those old iMac G3s, and the mouse, even from those times, was notably unique. The see-through, the plastic see-through ones?

1:00:58Marques Brownlee:Yeah. It's an awesome mouse. It's an awesome mouse. I mean, it's just cool looking. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Insane mouse dress. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Desktop or laptop person? Am I going to be canceled for the magic mouse stuff? No, no, no. Should we edit this out? No, no. I'm, we have, I'm not going to name names, but we have people who work here. It's me and Michael. Also. We like the magic mouse. Magic mouse freaks. Yes, Alice. I knew that we shared a bond except for this whole basketball thing that you're always talking about. What? Oh, my gosh. it's just something about the magic mouse that's brings out yeah I just get mad for no reason maybe John Ternus is the first thing he's going to do no that's actually huge wait he has to know the magic mouse is bad he's a product guy he has to know the magic mouse is bad Marquez please talk into the mic Tim Cook I was like I could cast alert I would cast alert here did you see that you've seen the clip where I asked him cook about the magic mouse and he's like we make a mouse like that he hasn't thought about that in years Tim I haven't seen the Ternus one well I haven't asked him about it but I know that he knows he knows the magic mouse is bad of course he knows it because he also has two and this is exactly what he does he takes over at Apple I don't know if that's true I have not reported that out please as a reporter I will confirm that actually Apple PR will not September 1st when he becomes a new CEO I'm starting a countdown timer to when Apple releases a good mouse okay because there's a lot of stuff I want Apple to make that's maybe at the top of my list.

1:02:27And honestly, I'm fine with that mouse just having a port someplace else.

1:02:30Marques Brownlee:That would be a really nice start. Right? Yeah. I mean, Alice agrees. Even if that's the only change they make, even if it's still an ergonomic nightmare, just move the port. Okay. Do you have hands? Yeah. How is it an ergonomic nightmare? Because it's the shape. I have like a hand that is maybe three times the size of the hand they designed it for. That's true. So what if they just made Magic Mouse XL? Yeah, what if they made Magic Mouse... That would solve one of the critical issues. Ultra. Oh, yeah. Magic Mouse Studio. That would solve one of the two horrible things about the Magic Mouse. It's$27 ,000 to get that mouse.

1:03:06What, would you buy it?

1:03:07Marques Brownlee:No, I would just use an MX Master, which is just fine. If you spend an extra$600, it has wheels. All right, I'm in. Stainless steel. It's little feet. It just walks around. It's a little scurry. Yes. And a tail. I'm pretty sure John Ternus is listening and taking these ideas right now. John, if you just watch this part of the podcast, Magic Mouse 2, please. You can do wonders. Okay. Rapid fire. Rapid fire. Laptop or desktop? Laptop always. Laptop always. Okay. No desktop at all. I have a Mac mini running stuff. Totally. What browser do you use? Are you an AI browser person or are you a regular browser person?

1:03:46I have a lot of browsers. Right now, Chrome vertical tabs. I know you have a lot of feelings on that.

1:03:51Marques Brownlee:I like Chrome. I heard a lot about Arc on this podcast. I don't know what those, I guess. Arc is nice. Arc is not the AI browser, but it is the beautiful functional browser that a lot of us like. But then there's like the perplexity comment. I've been using comment a lot. Okay. Yeah, I've been using comment a lot. You know, here's a true story. I used Microsoft Edge for a long time on a Mac. I know it hurts people. It hurts when I say it. but they had this great feature called collections which everyone else ripped off but you could group your tabs or you could group your shortcuts together and it was amazing especially like when i was working like i'd be working on a project like the book and i'd have 10 documents and 10 different things and i just wanted them in one collection oh like a tab group it's a tab group but it's saved oh okay so okay it's persistent yeah it's like a bookmarks manager but it was better than that.

1:04:46Marques Brownlee:And then every other browser was like, we'll add that. And then you were like, finally, no more edge. Yeah, I don't know. Can I share a quick, I've never met someone else who uses perplexity comment. I don't use it anymore, but I wanted to share the last time I used perplexity comment, which was me asking it to search. I gave it a bunch of things that I was making a mood board. And I was like, can you go and collect these images for me? And I gave it this big list of everything I was looking for. And it's like, go out and find these images. And it came back and it found me 20 images. And I was like, that's fantastic.

1:05:16Marques Brownlee:And I was like, was it pictures of the magic mouse? Sure. For your mood for the story, it could totally be. But then I asked it, OK, now here's an updated version of the list. Go out and find images. And it said, I don't have the ability to find images. And I spent an hour where it was just like, I can't do this, Ellis. I don't have image ability. You're like, you did it. In this chat are the images you found me. And then I was just like, I deleted it off my computer. I use Comet a lot in the book. because it became like a reporting assistant where I could say, write to this company, see if they're willing to do an interview about this and it could just do that in the browser.

1:05:52Yeah, Comet's good. And I'm testing personal computer by perplexity now, which is pretty good too.

1:05:57Marques Brownlee:Okay, I'll redownload it. Yeah. Okay, sorry. These are not rapid fire. Task app or pen and paper? Both. Both. Yeah, like when I'm doing something, like if I'm like a day of video publishing, I have like a lot of things to do or, you know, column or whatever I'm have going that day. I have like lots of tasks that I need to do at the moment. They're like immediate tasks. And I write those on a paper on my, on my desk. Um, but then I have this crazy notion to do list thing that I've made. It's really not great. Um, do you use notion for to do's? No, not for to do's. We use it for a project manager for like a per video basis.

1:06:37Yeah, so do we. Well, we started doing that. And then I just because I was like, oh, I'm already here. Let me try to use the AI to build a to-do list thing. And it's a pretty good job because I'm also doing meeting notes in there. So I'm doing a lot in there right now. But that like has a big list. And that's like further. It's like stuff I need to do for the day. But it's not like I need to do it this hour.

1:07:00Marques Brownlee:Okay. That's a good distinction. All right. I haven't used a pen and paper in years, I think. since 1992 basically phone phoning your pocket right now no it's on in my backpack on the side oh which one is it it's a iphone 17 pro if you had to use a different phone which one would you pick iphone 17 pro max that's a good answer what if you couldn't use what if you couldn't use any pro what if you couldn't use any iphone samsung galaxy no i'd probably do a pixel i don't know i have I've been playing around with a lot of the Android foldable phones. Yeah. My issue, and I'm sure I'm going to have the same issue with the foldable iPhone, is very big for me.

1:07:44Marques Brownlee:Yeah. Well, it's interesting the way they're trying to, allegedly, allegedly, it's going to be like this much smaller passport style and then wider. So it could be smaller and fit in your pocket better than the current Pro. Yeah. I just do a lot of texting on the fly when I'm commuting and stuff like that, and then it's like, okay, I'm putting it in my pocket. It's too big. And then I love being able to open it up and do much more with the bigger screen. But I don't take advantage of that in that many scenarios. And I think I would more if I actually had a smaller footprint. Interesting. Okay.

1:08:19Yeah.

1:08:21Marques Brownlee:How fast can you type the alphabet? Like, I don't know, 90 words, I don't know, 80 words per second? Is this your keyboard of choice? So it's a bit of a tradition around here for our guests on Waveform to simply type A through Z as fast as they can. It doesn't matter. We have a leaderboard. No pressure. You'll have three tries. And we also offer any of these fine, beautiful keyboards over here if you'd like. I don't know if you typically write on. Oh, as if I win? No, if you want to get a faster score, if you type faster on any of these keyboards, we can swap it out. No, I think I can do with this.

1:08:52Okay. Oh, boy.

1:08:54Marques Brownlee:No pressure. I'm going to point my microphone. So the way this works, so before you take your three attempts, the way this works is as soon as you type the letter A, it starts counting, and you just go A, B, C, D, E. If you miss a letter, you still have to hit that letter, and then that's how you get all the way through Z. Can I type something else? Okay. No, no. I can do this. I can do this. You got this. The first one, you'll just figure out how it works, and then the next two, you'll lock in. All right. Ready? I'm ready.

1:09:31Marques Brownlee:oh you have to press it okay you got your first yes first rodeo so now you've seen it 10.5 okay i won't tell you the scores unless you want to hear them but i see it says best time right under five oh no that's because i did earlier but you have two more shots you did it earlier i just did it to make sure it worked but we have a leaderboard of everyone who's ever been on the podcast well you're at the top or you're on there at five. So I know at least I, my official time might be slower than that. I don't remember. They'll find the leaderboard, but you got, you got extra shots to get even faster.

1:10:03All right. Yeah. We go again.

1:10:05Marques Brownlee:Go for it.

1:10:09I want to go again. I restarted. Okay. Wait, how do I restart? I think you hit enter and it restarts. Okay. Got it. All right. Yeah. Sound effects. Go.

1:10:23I'm going again

1:10:28go is that how it works

1:10:30Marques Brownlee:yeah just send it just send it until until you get to see

1:10:45oh so much slower this time

1:10:49Marques Brownlee:I was doing better when I wasn't looking at the... Are you like home road, just like banging keys or are you trying to like... I'm trying to touch type, but I'm like, then I realize... Some of them are in weird places. Well, you realize you skip a letter and then you're like, oh, I hit that. Like, that's what's... Yeah, you gotta make sure... I'm like, oh, I've moved on and it's like, oh no, like you didn't get, you know... You didn't hit beat, yeah, yeah. Because like I should just be looking at the screen and touch typing without looking at the keyboard. Yeah, that's high difficulty. All right.

1:11:18Also, you know, this is making me realize My kids don't know how to type. I have an eight-year-old who does not know how to type.

1:11:24Marques Brownlee:What about on a phone screen? On a phone screen, kind of, or on an iPad, but mostly they just do voice. Oh, that is... And I'm really upset about it, and I'm going to start working with him on Saturdays on typing. Because something we talked about is something that, quote, kids these days don't know anymore. They don't really have to know file structure or that files are even a thing. And they also don't really have to know how to Google things. and I guess they don't really have to know how to type very much. No. Wow. I mean, they know how to type like, they know how to type emojis. Of course.

1:11:58Marques Brownlee:Well, that's important. Because you can't just say, well, you could say the emoji, but you got to really find the perfect one. All right, one more time. Go for it. This is very embarrassing.

1:12:17Okay. I beat my time there. 9.3.

1:12:20Marques Brownlee:9.3. Lock it in. All right. I feel like if I did this a few more times, I would be way better. Totally. I think that's usually. I think we prove I'm a human. On the putt. My pin on it. Yeah, exactly. That's very important. Do you want to know leaderboard scores or do you just want to? Yes, I do. Okay. Is there anyone good on the leaderboard? It's in Slack. I think I'll tell you who's around you in your time. Let's see. I got a DM from Adam. Boom. Okay. your 9.3 is exactly in between our own cinematographer Brandon and David Blaine. Wow. Right nestled right in between those two. David Blaine doesn't have magic tricks to be faster.

1:12:56Marques Brownlee:He was he was also like I'm going to be super slow and then he got faster and faster as he went. So there it is. Well that I mean I feel like I would also. OK tell me what you are. What is it. I ended up. This is the the whole leaderboard. Cleo's at four. Yeah. that's amazing Tom Scott had a 3.5 insane some people are just insanely fast typists but didn't Tom Scott do it on like his Dell laptop yeah it was like like his keyboard was the loudest thing I'm coming back and I'm gonna practice this is not good that's good no that's perfect I would really love to come back with the 1x robot and maybe they'll type I don't think so we'll see how fast they can type Joanna thanks for coming on thanks for talking to me and I'm I'm gonna point people towards watching your videos and reading this book because I think it's all it's all very interesting.

1:13:45Marques Brownlee:What about the best AI wearable in the world? And of course, well, they can get their hands on this wearable if they get the book, of course. That's right. And they can subscribe. I noticed you stopped wearing it. I can't. I feel bad lying. Uh-huh. You can't put it on? No, I just it would imply that. Oh, you feel bad lying that you're I see. Okay. Yeah. So true. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get Marquez to wear it. Yeah, you should get. I'll give him the pin. Get the real Marquez to wear it. And I so appreciate that Marquez bot for you being so honest here. I appreciate the pin. I will get it. You know what we should really do as a test?

1:14:18Can you fold your t-shirts?

1:14:20Marques Brownlee:I can't fold anything. No. I just kind of have claws. Can you fold laundry? I haven't folded. No. Actually, genuinely, no. I can put stuff on hangers sometimes. But yeah, I avoid the folding stuff. Yeah, we should test that. It would really be it. That's the Turing test. Me versus CES robot. That actually is basically the Turing test. The CAPTCHA means nothing anymore. It's fold my laundry. But if humans can fold the laundry, you're human. There it is. Now we know. Great. We'll have you back on at some point. Thanks again. Thanks. And see you soon.

1:14:56Good thing I recorded this all in my B bracelet.

1:14:59Marques Brownlee:Nice.