Intelligent Machines 813 transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Intelligent Machines. Jeff Jarvis is here. Paris is still on vacation, but good news Richard Campbell joins us as we interview Keech Hagee, the author of a brand new biography of Sam Altman. And, just a little tip, next week, corey Doctorow. We've got some great guests coming up. Next, on Intelligent Machines Podcasts you love From people you trust is twit. This is intelligent machines, episode 813, recorded april 2nd 2025. The optimist it's time for intelligent machines, the show where we cover the latest in AI, robotics and those little devices, those doohickeys scattered all around your house that are that are watching you. I just want you they're watching you just and listening. Just want you to know. Jeff Jarvis is here. Emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark graduate school of journalism at the city, the Craig Newmark Craig. Craig, craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. How long do we have to do that? Oh, forever, forever.

0:01:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Because emeritus is forever. It's Latin for old. As long as I'm old and here. Yeah, that's it.

0:01:16 - Leo Laporte
Currently at Montclair State University and Suni Stonybrook, author of the Gutenberg parenthesis. The web we weave is the latest. So nice to see you, jeff. I just had not cacio e pepe, but a little homemade carbonara.

0:01:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Second best.

0:01:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's the next best thing. Yeah, now Paris is still in Europe, probably eating carbonara herself. So we thought, well, who could we get to replace Paris Martineau for one more week? She'll be back next week and, lo and behold, we've got richard campbell who happened to be around.

He was in town for windows weekly and he's just sticking around. He is the host of radio, an expert on technology but also on ai. He we talk a lot about ai on the show and, uh, he is very much and happy to do a double header, double header. We're calling him old leather button because he's got to sit there for six hours. Don't want to tell you what they call me. Great to have you too, richard, and we will get to the AI news in a bit. But, as we've been doing on this show, we changed the format a little bit. We've been bringing in a guest every week to talk about all things AI and I am thrilled to get this guest. Keech Hagee is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

It's good to see you, keech Good to see you, she has written a book which comes out not till May 20th, called the Optimist, but pre-order it now, everybody.

0:02:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Pre-order it now.

0:02:35 - Leo Laporte
Bia will want to, because it's Sam Altman. Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future the first full-length biography of Sam Altman Keach. Welcome to Intelligent Machines. It's great to have you.

0:02:47 - Keach Hagey
Thanks for having me.

0:02:48 - Leo Laporte
You say in the introduction, because I don't know, sam at first was reluctant to have a book about him. Yeah, I think he kind of helped you towards eventually, right he? Wasn't it's not an unauthorized biography, but you said I don't care if you don't help me, because my last book was about Sumner Rebstone, a guy who was basically in a coma the whole time. Is there any comparison between Sumner Redstone and Sam Altman, or they seem like antithetical creatures?

0:03:21 - Keach Hagey
Well, actually there are. I've thought about this a little bit, because everyone always asks me like, what does Sam really want? Does he really want money? Is he motivated by money? And the thing about Sumner Redstone is, yeah, he's motivated by money, but he's motivated by winning, Winning, Winning right the conquest. And I don't think Sam is quite motivated by winning in the same way, but he is motivated by building. So I that they're similar in that way.

0:03:45 - Leo Laporte
You say in the beginning that Sam doesn't need money that one of the reasons Sam could take this job and tell the board I'm not going to have any stake, any equity, which was a condition of him being on the board of the nonprofit. But he could do that because he was already a billionaire.

0:04:03 - Keach Hagey
Yeah, so what Sam really is is an investor. He is a brilliant investor and he made a ton of money being head of Y Combinator and then personally investing in all kinds of moonshot startups, sort of on the side, through his own venture funds, which he continues to do, although much less than he used to. So he made his money before he really ever became CEO of OpenAI.

0:04:28 - Leo Laporte
And Jeff and Richard. Please don't let me hog Keech on this because I know you all have things to ask. But the thing that brought our attention to you, keech, was the excerpt published last week in the Wall Street Journal from your book the Optimistist, which tells the behind the scenes story. Jeff last asked me last week we had gary uh rivlin on, who has a book uh called ai valley about uh ai and talks a lot about sam altman. And jeff said now, did he, did he reveal what happened behind the scenes when altman was fired? And I said not, not really. Well, guess who did great reporting on this?

0:05:04 - Jeff Jarvis
really. Leo sent me, sent me the excerpt from the journal on the weekend when I was out shopping and I immediately went back. Can we get Key John now, please? Yeah.

0:05:12 - Leo Laporte
Because nobody really knew the whole thing. All we knew is the board was so careful about this. They said, well, we just don't have confidence in his candor, we don't feel like he's been fully candid with us. But later they kind of intimated stuff. But this is really was actually a lot more than I thought he. He really did lie to the board a lot the combination of things right, there's like a.

0:05:38 - Keach Hagey
I think there are long reasons and there are short reasons why he got fired and why the board decided to fire him. The long reasons are there was a power struggle, and let's put the lying aside for a second. There was a year-long power struggle about who should be on the board, and even though Sam didn't have equity in OpenAI, he had real power right, he had the de facto power, and so this nonprofit board was realizing that every person they put forward, sam would reject, and then he would like counter with one of his friends, which they felt was, you know, not the kind of thing that allowed them to actually have oversight over him.

0:06:08 - Leo Laporte
The board was really there as because it was a nonprofit to protect that mission, right Even to protect it from Sam.

0:06:15 - Keach Hagey
Right and they'd had this very sort of pie in the sky mission that our duty is not to shareholders, it is to humanity. Now it's pretty hard to interpret that mission, I would say. But leaving that aside, so there's a power struggle, and then there's a series of things that the board felt that SAM had either omitted things or lied to them about. That had to do with safety, a number of safety breaches. There was this deployment safety board that OpenAI and Microsoft put together to sort of review things before they went out, because there was a lot of fear about what these tools could do. Right, I mean that that was that fear is what opening.

I was born out of um, and there were, you know, several occasions where something would bad would happen and sam wouldn't mention it to the board or he would tell the board that things had passed it when they had not. So there's that um, and then the the short reasons, I would say. Say one more big long reason is that there was this OpenAI startup fund that the board believed was like OpenAI, but in fact they learned that Sam himself owned it personally and it took them months to actually get that answer out of the executives and Sam, and you know they changed the structure once that became public. But they really felt like, whoa, you went before Congress and said you had no financial stake here and yet you own this little startup fund personally. You know that's challenging for us, and so then the short reasons had to do with two executives that came forward not long before he got fired with sort of receipts on what they felt made them lose trust in Sam, and one of them was a board member, ilya Setskovor, the chief scientist and co-founder, and one of them was the CTO, mira Marotti.

0:07:57 - Leo Laporte
Which is interesting because she was the replacement for Sam when he was fired as CEO and then also defended him and defended him. Yeah, yeah, weird, so weird, right yeah?

0:08:10 - Keach Hagey
so, so weird. So what was really wild, and one of the things that are revealed in that excerpt is that we, the journal, had reported before that ilia satsukawa had come forward with a list of you know dozens of reasons, um, or instances where sam had either lied or had had some toxic behavior, but, um, we never really knew where they came from. But the in this excerpt, uh, I report that they mostly came from screenshots of mira marati's slack.

So you know where do you get those, mira, obviously yeah, and mira talked to, you know, the board members who ended up firing Sam at length about a pattern of behavior that she said. You know Sam basically had a two part playbook. He would either say what he needed to say to get what he wanted or, if that didn't work, he would try to undermine the person. And Mira says that she has given that feedback to Sam directly, so in her mind it wasn't like some huge revelation, but the board did ask she didn't stab him in the back, she stabbed him in the front.

Exactly there you go. That's what my old journalism mentor used to say Stab him in the front.

0:09:17 - Jeff Jarvis
So Mira is a technologist, ilya is a technologist, they're all high-level technologists. Sam is not Right. So what was their pecking order in their views to him?

0:09:32 - Keach Hagey
So I mean, Sam did study computer science, you know, in college, but you're right that, like as I read in the book, like he's really a fundraiser and a sort of a visionary, right, he is not down there in the weeds doing running tests of you know, training runs for LLMs at all. So Elias Azkabar, he is the sort of technical visionary of the company. He's the one thinking about what kind of training runs there should be. And then Mira's running the company day to day, deciding who gets the GPUs. She's totally managing this Microsoft relationship that is the backbone of the company and where all of their computing power comes from. And Mira is the one kind of because she's making the trains run on time and all of that. She is experiencing the chaos when Sam tells two people, yes, and that has to somehow be reconciled, right, right.

Or one of her big complaints was about the relationship with Greg Brockman, another OpenAI co-founder, who was on the board and was a really close ally of Sam's but didn't really have direct reports and would sort of crash into people's projects sometimes and people would come to Mira and ask her you know, please, please, get Greg out of my project or please solve this problem. And then you know, greg would go to Sam to get to make it, so the mayor couldn't really exert any power over him. So that became an untenable situation and it's why Greg Brockman was removed from the board with Sam Altman when the blip happened.

0:10:57 - Jeff Jarvis
The other big question I have, and I'll show my cards here I'm not a believer that AGI is going to happen. I follow the writing about Tess Greal and the odd philosophies a lot, and so the definition of safety to me has been mangled. So when you're talking to somebody, you don't know if it's stochastic parrot'sots present tense safety or if it's Tess Greal two centuries ahead safety. So when people talked about safety and OpenAGI and that being a key issue that was raised, was the discussion way up in the future clouds or was it down to earth? What was the definition that people were working with when they were worried about safety and open AI and thus Sam?

0:11:50 - Keach Hagey
So that is such a great question, and I also struggle to sort of pin that very thing down, because I find it very slippery when you have these conversations. Right, you're right. I remember one of the very first interviews I had with Sam. I asked him this question directly what does AI safety mean to you? And he said it would be. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically it's a world in which things would be better if AI existed than if they hadn't.

0:12:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Presidents.

0:12:20 - Keach Hagey
Meaning that, like the net you know, sort of like the net of everything is more positive than it is negative, which I found that a very startling answer. You know, at the time this is when everyone was really freaked out about existential risk and something that you know, Sam was talking a lot about existential risk, but that definition seems more like an economic place that we're landing.

0:12:44 - Leo Laporte
It's also a bit of a zuckerberg answer, in a way, like we're connecting the world and it's all better because of us the net is the interesting thing, yeah you know, there might be some hardships along the way, but in the long run, yeah, you, uh, you actually begin the book with the warning from peter teal to sam altman, and this was just a few weeks before sam was fired. Teal said you got half of your company. Yeah, is, is is worried about ai. Uh, he specifically referred to eliezer yudkowsky, who's who, teal said, became extremely black pilled and luddite. And uh, and sam just kind of brushed off teal's warning. He, uh, you know, teal said half the company's been taken over by the effective altruists.

By the way, there's so much inside baseball here. If you've listened to the show, jeff's explained this. What test real means, why effective altruists aren't really altruistic, and a lot more so. There's a lot of shorthand in this, but, uh, the eas, which sounds on the face of it and the same bankran freed was also an ea stands on the face of it like, well, what's wrong with that? They want to end, uh, global poverty, right, but as you said, keith, they changed their views, right yeah that's right.

What was their new goal?

0:14:05 - Keach Hagey
to prevent um existential risk from ai and you say you write, prevent runaway ai from murdering humanity yeah, I mean this is fascinating calculus right in in that movement where all of a sudden it's the morally correct thing to do is to think about future humans, not present humans, because there will be so many more future humans, not present humans because there will be so many more future humans Like so. If you're a utilitarian, the math is such that you know I guess you know assuming we don't totally destroy the birth rate, there will be more humans in the future, right? So that became a completely different moral universe than, like I think, most of us are used to operating with inside.

0:14:41 - Leo Laporte
Well, it also raises questions about well, what about current day? Humans, right, Are you not?

0:14:48 - Keach Hagey
worried about us. So, to answer your question, though, going back to like, which version of safety people were worried about in the board fight, I do think, while EA itself was not a driving force, there's this moment when the board got an early peek at GPT-4, before they'd even released ChatGPT, and they got to watch it, like pass the AP bio test. And I think that was a sobering moment for these people who were like, oh, our jobs are actually really important, right, this AGI thing might really be sooner than we think, and our jobs are really important and the board needs to be functioning well. And so that, um, that sort of sense of import of the imminence of agi and the potential dangers of it, I do think colored how they behaved.

0:15:36 - Leo Laporte
Um, because they did not feel like it was okay to have a situation where they felt lied to did you even was saying that a couple of weeks ago that even open ai really didn't kind of believe what was going to happen until they saw chat, gpt4, and then it was because, this is what open.

0:15:54 - Richard Campbell
Ai was formed for right. They were afraid of what google brain was doing and tried to convince all those scientists to go into the open, including saskovar absolutely, yeah, exactly that.

0:16:05 - Keach Hagey
That's the great irony of it. All right? Is that opening? I was born from this fear. It was partly a fear of I think it was less a fear of AI risk I was ultimately there than a fear of the concentration of power, of.

0:16:19 - Richard Campbell
Google being Google having brought all the best minds together.

0:16:21 - Keach Hagey
So let's go get the guest mind for ourselves. Yeah, yes brought all the best minds together, so let's go get the guest mind for ourselves yeah, yes, when you hook up profits to this technology, that that would be like fundamentally problematic right which boy.

0:16:34 - Leo Laporte
We change that view and of course, that's what happened. It's and that's one of the reasons the board ousted him, I think, was this move towards making a open ai for profit, or at least part of openAI for-profit.

0:16:47 - Keach Hagey
I actually don't think that that is totally true. I mean, they'd already started the for-profit subsidiary of nonprofits, so that had already been sort of cleared. But broadly, were they behaving more and more like a Silicon Valley startup that just needed to ship quickly? Keep the momentum, do all the things you have to do, right To like to stay alive in a commercial world.

0:17:09 - Richard Campbell
Sure, and did that run up against If I'm wrong, weren't they staffed with Silicon Valley startup people? Yeah, what a surprise.

0:17:16 - Keach Hagey
Well, you know, there's an interesting thing about the tribes inside. Sometimes Sam would describe there being three tribes inside OpenAI and they were really different tribes. So there was the sort of academic, the researcher tribe, there's the AI safety tribe and then there's the policy tribe and I would say there's also like the startup tribe and they are often different people and a lot of the AI safety people really were like people who are close to or involved in effective altruismism or at least the broader, you know ai safety community. Um, there were just like that company was full of these people and a lot of them were freaking out about cut corners that were cut in safety and a lot of them left, was uh and went to form anthropic right.

That was the whole exodus there some of them did, but I guess what I'm talking about is even right before the blip, a bunch of them sort of after Sam was reinstituted, you saw like departure after departure, yeah of including Mira Marotti including Mira right, but, uh, jan Lakey, who is um running the super alignment team with with Ilya Seltzkiver, ilya left right, all these people um is brockman is still around or is he on extended leave? He is around, he is back from leave okay, um yeah and when you say left.

0:18:30 - Richard Campbell
Did they depart or were they pushed out?

0:18:34 - Keach Hagey
I would. I mean, there were a lot of resignations, um, so they're all resignations, but I think that the company became an unwelcoming place yeah or um, for people for whom this was the top priority so, of course, most notable departure was elon musk, who founded, co-founded uh open ai and had a and split with uh sam.

0:18:58 - Leo Laporte
He was very much uh on the side of the uh. Oh, my god, ai is gonna kill us all. He called it summoning the demon. Weirdly, he's, of course, started his own venture, which is worth now uh 80 billion dollars thanks to its merger with uh x. We'll get to that a little later on. Um, he and sam don't talk right at this stage.

0:19:23 - Keach Hagey
Sam, don't talk right At this stage.

0:19:25 - Leo Laporte
I don't think so. He's suing them.

0:19:27 - Keach Hagey
No, they are sort of mortal enemies at this point. They started out as really good friends and you know they started out having these sort of private dinners together discussing these apocalyptic ideas, some of which were about AI. But you know, the company was really born out of this panic and fear about existential risk.

0:19:48 - Leo Laporte
Right, you said something in the book that really kind of interested me. Elon has said many times he thinks we're in a simulation. Sam believes that too.

0:19:58 - Keach Hagey
Yeah, I mean Peter Thiel. If you ask him about it he'll say that's freshman dorm room. Talk, you know. Well, it is.

Totally, totally. And the one person who says he believes it is Peter Thiel actually who's had this conversation with him, because you know, peter Thiel loves to sort of think of these wild ideas. But I think what Sam would say is, if you do the logic experiment about is this a simulation or not, you kind of come to the conclusion that it very likely might be or probably is, um, but he would say, you have to live your life as if it's not yeah, well, he's right.

0:20:31 - Leo Laporte
Geez, how Calvinist can you get? Well, but it also says that super intelligence has been created. I mean, that's, that's part of that is.

0:20:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh yeah, it's happened already and that's why we're living in a simulation, so speaking, of which, as you very wisely asked, sam, going in to the definition of safety, have you had a satisfactory definition of agi or asi it?

0:20:55 - Keach Hagey
it moves oh yeah right. Um, the definition is the. As my understanding is, it can do most tasks better than a human. Some of the best definitions make sure that it is a general intelligence right, that it's not just about tasks, but that it can range over all types of tasks, so there's a better than a human piece of it, or as well as a human. But no, I would say the company is increasingly open about the fact that, like nobody really knows what it is and it's like barely definable.

0:21:31 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, so we can declare its existence when we feel like it.

0:21:35 - Leo Laporte
I'll know it when. I see it, Richard. So it's pornography, so kind of right.

0:21:41 - Keach Hagey
Kind of, and of course it's very tricky because Microsoft has this deal with OpenAI, where if OpenAI declares AGI, then Microsoft no longer has access to that IP after that point.

0:21:55 - Richard Campbell
That's the financial definition. Here's an interesting incentive for you that has nothing to do with a technical measure.

0:22:00 - Leo Laporte
Speaking of Microsoft, tell us about Microsoft's reaction to Sam Altman's firing.

0:22:06 - Keach Hagey
So again, there's like a short and a long one, right.

0:22:11 - Leo Laporte
I want the deets. Spill the tea Okay.

0:22:14 - Keach Hagey
So in the short term I would say, you know, I think it was very public that Microsoft ran to be publicly supportive of Sam Altman after he was fired right supportive of Sam Altman after he was fired right. There's kind of a funny thing in the book where, like, the board didn't even have immediate plans to tell Microsoft. I think they ultimately would. But you know, when they had this sort of plan, amirah Marotti looked at their plan the next day who they were going to tell. She's like why is tell Microsoft not on here?

0:22:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, kind of big deal.

0:22:42 - Keach Hagey
Yeah. So eventually, you know, miro's the one who had to call before even Sam was alerted, and say this you know this is happening. They had to go pull Kevin Scott out of a meeting and had to tell Satya Nadella that this was going down. So, in the short term, microsoft is super supportive and they you supportive and they offered OpenAI employees jobs. Openai basically got Sam back by having almost every employee threatened to quit, and what allowed them to do that is that Microsoft had said we'll hire all OpenAI employees.

0:23:17 - Jeff Jarvis
So that created an outward pressure. I hadn't thought of that before. By Microsoft doing that, Microsoft proved to the board that you could kill the company here.

0:23:28 - Richard Campbell
We went through this on Windows Weekly in pretty good detail because it was during. It was the end of the build conference too. So you know, nadella had just come off sort of his triumphant week of talking about how everything was going so well. It was like on the Thursday he finds out that Sam's gone, and over the weekend there is much noise, and I think it was by Monday they basically said yeah, open invitation, every employee can apply to work at Microsoft. We're happy to hire you.

0:23:55 - Leo Laporte
And in fact, 770 employees signed a petition saying if you don't rehire Sam Altman, we're going to Microsoft. Yeah, rehire Sam Altman, we're going to Microsoft.

0:24:05 - Keach Hagey
Yeah, microsoft had like office space at the LinkedIn offices and laptops for them and everything. Yeah, they were ready. I think that's a bit of a stunt, but they swear that was true.

0:24:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, it was surprising to me, because I didn't get the impression leading up to that point, that there was this universal support for Sam Altman in the company, in OpenAI.

0:24:26 - Keach Hagey
Well, there was universal support for the tender offer that he was organizing.

0:24:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it was a profit deal.

0:24:34 - Keach Hagey
Yeah. So the key thing of all of this is that the company was raising from investors at that time in a huge tender offer that was valued the company at nearly $90 billion, up from $30 billion not that long before and if you got in early your strike price could be the $30 billion and then you'd make a ton of money. So the employees were looking at millions of dollars each, and all of them believed that this would not happen if Sam was ousted, because Sam was the one who has the relationships with the investors. This is what he does. He is a brilliant fundraiser. So it wasn't really hard for them to decide to sign that petition because they figured our equity is worthless if Sam leaves.

0:25:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, you really do a good job of showing the interlocking pieces of this puzzle. Thank you, it's fascinating, yeah uh.

0:25:31 - Keach Hagey
So what was such in adela's reaction, when they, when they finally did tell him oh yeah, we fired sam yeah, I mean, he was obviously completely shocked, um, and you know, he and sam, you know, sam at that point was like completely shocked in himself and I didn't really understand even how or why this had happened. And Satya threw his weight behind Sam, you know, supported him, stood by him and is a big part of the reason why the blip was so short. That said, the blip really shook Microsoft, as you would expect. Right, this is our biggest partner, our most important partner, surely, and this is not something we can really count on. And so you saw, not that long after, they went and built a lifeboat in the form of hiring Mustafa Suleiman and buying Inflection AI, which is a rival of open AI, and trying to build out their own AI capacity.

0:26:27 - Jeff Jarvis
I'd be curious to hear you and Richard compare notes on where you think Microsoft stands now in having seemed to have been over-dependent upon open AI, and how is the relationship now?

0:26:42 - Keach Hagey
Well, it is tense. It is tense and it is evolving. You know there were tough negotiations. We've already reported at the Journal that there were tough negotiations in December as they were negotiating that carve out for Oracle to allow Stargate to happen. And if you just step back I think we can all see that their incentives are not as converged as they once were. So OpenAI has become a consumer product company, which I didn't see that coming. I'm not sure anyone did At the beginning of this.

It seemed like it was going to be an enterprise product that Microsoft was going to sell. So they are out in the marketplace with a very successful consumer product and in many cases they are competing directly with Microsoft.

0:27:27 - Richard Campbell
I don't think Microsoft and there's all this tussling over GPUs. I mean, if you look at Now while running on Microsoft hardware in Azure data centers.

0:27:33 - Keach Hagey
Yeah, and I don't know if you've seen Sam's X feed lately, but he's basically just like openly begging for more GPUs at this point.

0:27:40 - Richard Campbell
The thing that led to Stargate was they had this deal with Microsoft that they were going to go through Azure and everything and Azure's running out of capacity because they were demanding so much for the next experiment. So they finally had a point where it's like hey, you want to experiment somewhere else Because we're selling Azure for other things too, and that really opened the door for Stargate, which was already in progress.

0:28:04 - Leo Laporte
That's the half trillion dollar deal with oracle. Uh sam sunsan amasayoshi's son of uh softbank. Um, that's a the the president announced uh early in his uh uh.

0:28:18 - Keach Hagey
I guess he's still early in his tenure, wow uh, first day, first full day of his tenure, didn't waste any time.

0:28:27 - Richard Campbell
Oh my God. But I would also. Would go back to Satch and Adela being shocked. This guy again had just finished saying we're betting the whole company on AI. We have a relationship with OpenAI that week and he didn't know the board was going to fire him. Then the observer seat appears and so forth. He's got to face his own board. Satya is saying how did you not know this?

0:28:51 - Leo Laporte
It must also irk him that OpenAI has done so well with the consumer-facing products the fastest selling 100 million subscribers in one month Nothing has ever done that. Two months Okay. Nothing's ever done that. Two months Okay, nothing's ever done that before. And now, just this week, with the new image generation, you're seeing another doubling or even more of subscribers. The public vision of AI is open AI. I mean, that's what the public really is aware of, and it isn't a business product. So that must irk Nadella a little bit as well.

0:29:26 - Keach Hagey
I think you're probably right and that tension is getting more awkward by the day, especially because there's this GPU struggle underneath it all.

0:29:35 - Leo Laporte
Where does OpenAI stand now? Because they've just made some big executive moves. I think Sam has kind of stepped back a little bit, hasn't he?

0:29:43 - Keach Hagey
Well, in general they revamped the board, brought a lot more experienced corporate folk they fired the board.

0:29:52 - Leo Laporte
They started over, because that's the board that fired him, right? Yeah, although uh, sootsky was around for quite, is he still around? He was around for quite a while no, he has started his own company. Everybody has kind of spun off. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:05 - Keach Hagey
But look, big picture. What's happening is OpenAI is trying to turn into a more normal company. It was a very weird company and now it's just trying to become more conventional. They're in the midst of this attempt to convert to a for-profit or something closer to a more traditional for-profit, and that's going to require Microsoft's agreement.

0:30:26 - Jeff Jarvis
So talk about that, the negotiation for that cap table. Yeah, I mean, everything relies on it. Everything is up in the air now. Right, it's all a new bet, totally so. The dynamics are everybody is jockeying for their piece of that pie, right?

0:30:44 - Keach Hagey
That's absolutely true and that is happening right now. And so you have this tension we've been talking about between the sort of diverging strategies of these two companies and needs incentives of these two companies. You have the deep seek of it all right, which is suggesting that maybe this model of money equals success. Isn't. Isn't quite true, right? The model that OpenAI was built on, which is like whoever raises the most money, whoever gets the most GPUs, wins, and DeepSeek really called that into question. And then you know, the whole geopolitical swirl of it all adds a lot of intrigue, like if really we're going to be building out this infrastructure in the US with building a bunch of data centers. I mean, it's not entirely clear how possible that is, but all of that is pressing in on this negotiation.

0:31:37 - Leo Laporte
How much time did you spend talking to Sam? Were you able to interview him multiple times?

0:31:42 - Keach Hagey
Oh yeah, multiple times, and multiple coasts, um, um, I would say many hours.

0:31:49 - Leo Laporte
Has he read the book?

0:31:52 - Keach Hagey
Uh, he's smart to me that he would never read the book because he, it's good, I kind of admire Sam's.

0:31:57 - Leo Laporte
Really interesting because he's at least the picture you paint of him. Is this kind of self-deprecating guy like yeah, I was in an ashram I did the tech bro thing and you know he's, he's, he's got a set and he says I don't want you to write a book about me, that's. You know I'm not the center of the story and yet at the other side of it is he's kind of cutthroat business guy.

0:32:19 - Keach Hagey
He really he does want to win um yeah, I mean not only that, but he's also like pretty good at controlling a narrative he's very good at it.

0:32:28 - Leo Laporte
He's exceptional at it right.

0:32:30 - Richard Campbell
It seems like he makes multiple narratives too, like there's something he shows the public because another thing he shows to his executive. And then this whole AGI thing seems to be a chant for recruitment more than anything else.

0:32:43 - Keach Hagey
I think that's right. It was was fascinating to interview people you know in the sort of run-up to the company or the early years of the company, with this like litmus test of do you believe in? Agi was sort of one of the first questions right in any interview. And if you didn't forget it.

Well, not all of them did, but obviously they're going to like go for the people who believed in it. But you know them did. But obviously they're going to like go for the people who believed in it. But I talked to some folks who like honestly, like had amazing resumes, didn't quite believe. But if you're hanging out with all these people who do, within a few months they make you a believer, you get the religion.

0:33:14 - Richard Campbell
So I suspect the interview had to do with do you believe? Can we persuade you?

0:33:20 - Leo Laporte
And how much will it take? How many options Indoctrination is necessary. How much will it take? How many options Indoctrination is necessary? What's your strike price? So tell us what your sense of Sam is at base. I mean, what kind of person?

0:33:33 - Keach Hagey
is he really? I think Sam is. I mean, I think Sam's true superpower is as a fundraiser and he was the man for the moment, because this particular technology needed an ungodly amount of money and there are very few people outside of Microsoft and Google right, these gigantic tech companies that could do this. So the fact that he's able to like be so nimble out in the broader VC world yet amass the amounts of money that one might normally find inside a very large company is really unique to him, and I think he's basically just a fantastic salesman.

0:34:11 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, even reading the book he seems no wonder he and Musk are annoyed with each other, then right, like they're kind of the same species.

0:34:19 - Keach Hagey
And Musk? Yes, oh, I do think they are the same species in a lot of ways they are emotionally quite different.

We saw the emails from the lawsuit where Elon would toss off. Two minutes after someone emails him. He would toss off these angry emails like we have no hope of beating Google. We should all just go jump off a bridge now, and Sam is a cool customer. Most of the time he does get angry. It's not like he never gets angry, but he's more self-controlled among all the people that you come across now covering ai.

0:34:56 - Jeff Jarvis
How do I ask this um, if you found yourself in a Mexican resort, happening to be with one of them? Over a margarita margaritas in a dinner right, whatever right who would be not not for purposes of interviewing, but for just purposes of hanging out, who would be the most engaging or interesting to you.

0:35:27 - Keach Hagey
I mean, the thing about Sam is he is so much fun to talk to. He just has a fascinating mind and that's why I wanted to do the book really, because it's kind of an unvarnished portrait, but he's just interesting. That's what he does in these meetings, right, he knows he has this amazing ability to like know a lot about a million little things. So he will find something that he has in common with you, with anyone he's done this like since he was in high school just random technological details of things, and he will form these relationships with people based on their, like, shared loves that like never really go away.

0:36:04 - Leo Laporte
So um, yeah, I mean he's really fun to talk to you. That's kind of about. What I was about to say is the impression I got is actually of a fairly likable, certainly charismatic person that you would want to kind of spend some time with, even knowing all of the stuff behind the scenes, absolutely he comes across quite likable yeah he is likable.

0:36:26 - Keach Hagey
I mean, I don't think anyone would say that he's not actually like. I mean, well, a few people, right but that might not like him that much.

0:36:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, who's the geekiest?

0:36:38 - Keach Hagey
oh goodness, that I mean that's a, that's a hard. Uh yeah, tournament that is a hard tournament, probably greg brockman, yeah, um interesting well I was fascinated that in in I I would research everyone's background and almost every major character in this book was a math olympiad or mathlete of some were they also the av club um, which, I know, kind of seems like a joke.

It is sort of like a joke, right, like, of course, they're all like brilliant nerds. So, yes, um, but I think it takes something like a special kind of person to want to do that, right, um, and all of them did it yeah, there's being, there's being interested in math and there's wearing the jersey and competitive.

0:37:23 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, wearing the jersey. I like it.

0:37:25 - Leo Laporte
They were wearing the, but you know I mentioned this last week. It seems like there are two types of people will get into this their philosophy majors, and then there's the math majors and they they need each other to to make this happen. It's a really I find this a fascinating beat and this is a must read book. This is uh. I wish we were out tomorrow because I know that people listening would pre-order folks, pre-order your order I got my order in keith.

Hey g h a, hey gee. Hey j g e y. The book is called the optimist, sam altman, open ai and the race to invent the future. Norton books. Uh, not till may 20th, but you can read the excerpt last week in the wall street journal and which I highly recommend.

0:38:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Keisha, thank you so much for your time.

0:38:10 - Leo Laporte
I'm sorry that the journal put you in the witness protection program booth but, we were thrilled to be able to talk to you and we this was fairly short notice because we read the article and we said, got to get her on. And you've lived up to our hopes. It's a fascinating book and a great subject Thank you for being here, I really appreciate it.

0:38:32 - Keach Hagey
Thanks for having me.

0:38:34 - Leo Laporte
So glad you're here, Richard. Thank you for taking the time.

0:38:36 - Richard Campbell
And I bet you're glad now, because that was great, and now that I've heard that Jeff is in the same space I am with AGI. I think this is going to be a real fun conversation, because, damn it no I gotta invite more accelerationists on the show. You know damn some of us actually look at reality and try and perceive it, rather than you know I was in that camp fiction another.

0:38:55 - Leo Laporte
I was in that camp, but the more I use this stuff, the more I'm going. I don't know, you know, I understand, this is just. You know tokens and probability, but something's going on here.

0:39:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you see Gary Marcus's April Fool's joke? No, what did? He say, I just got back from a trip and amazingly I got invited to see GPT-5. And I got to say it did absolutely everything I wanted. I think AGI is actually here.

0:39:22 - Leo Laporte
Gary, gary, gary. All right, we're going to take a little break. When we come back we have the AI news. There's a lot, including a lot of AI, open AI news. They've reorganized a little bit, but before we get to that, let me tell you about our fine sponsor, actually somebody new to our network. We're glad to welcome our friends at outSystems and they are in the right spot because they are the leading AI-powered application and agent development platform. They're not new to this game. They've been doing it for more than 20 years.

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0:42:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Thank you for she was. She lived up to the, the. The excerpt we read I mean what a great. Uh, yeah, you made the staff work over the weekend to go get her.

0:42:12 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, guys for anthony nielsen good get, as they say in the biz, really great. Yeah, we're glad we could get her on. Maybe we'll have her back when the book comes out and oh, yeah, yeah, yeah the reaction to a reaction to it, and B it's the.

0:42:28 - Jeff Jarvis
It's the author's problem. I don't know when she locked up the last corrections, but with this company it's got to be tear your hair out, because everything's gonna happen.

0:42:37 - Leo Laporte
Crazy to write an AI book period, Because every week something different happens. This is the excerpt.

0:42:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, from the right perspective you can do it, but I think an AI news book yeah.

0:42:47 - Leo Laporte
This is the excerpt you can read now anyway, from the Wall Street Journal March 28th. Very good, the secrets and misdirection behind Sam Altman's firing from an open ai, and this is the first time I'd read a lot of uh, a lot of the details in this this was last week when we had gary rivlin on.

0:43:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I did as leo said earlier. I did say, oh, you know what?

0:43:07 - Leo Laporte
what's the juice? What's the juice? What's the juice?

0:43:09 - Jeff Jarvis
and so then that's when leo's, when he saw the the journal experts excerpt set up here it is right away.

0:43:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah and and uh. It took a real reporter really to dig and get that it was so ridiculously vague.

0:43:22 - Richard Campbell
We have no confidence in his candor like oh wait, read the excerpt there was good reason for them having no confidence in his candor.

0:43:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he was lying to him outright. He didn't even tell them ahead of time before he announced chat, gpt4, I mean there were all sorts of. If I were on that board I would have been just as upset and just a little more reason.

0:43:41 - Richard Campbell
The board should have been more direct on why he was let go yeah, well, yeah, but, but.

0:43:45 - Jeff Jarvis
But then they were stuck in this, in this vice, where they could have killed it all. I mean richard. I'd love to hear a little more about satya because he got really blind, but blind side is the least hugely blindsided.

0:43:58 - Richard Campbell
And you understand, like AI is the thing he is going to be known for at Microsoft. Everything else had come before. He was in a cloud with already a thing, all these other things. Here's this new thing. It gets to be his thing and he literally just come off stage is saying Microsoft is all in an AI. This is what this is about. Like the timing couldn't have been worse. And for us, come on the outside looking in. Like this is when we first saw what we started to call dark satcha. Like he's the yoga guy. Super chill, right, we're making one microsoft. Everybody needs to get along and work together.

Then the other guy showed up so it's in him and I think part of it was he was so humiliated. Yeah, well, and also like what an embarrassment. Yeah uh, well, he got his way in the long run although this is sort of work around yeah, I mean it does feel like the relationship is tattered now.

0:44:55 - Leo Laporte
It's not what it was right, but they both need each other somewhat, although microsoft has its own models. They have two very strong models.

0:45:04 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, co-pilot is based on realizing hey, now that we, and once we've built in this direct first off is microsoft is an aggregator, so every model that exists now is available. Through AI Studio, you can get Mistral. Even DeepSeek is there, right, right, so always, microsoft hedges their bets and they're building their own. But also, I think they cut a bad deal in the first place with OpenAI because their goal was hey, we're going to lend you money and you're going to give it back to us in the form of consuming Azure, like that's awesome, except that they started consuming more Azure than is possible. And suddenly you're in a trap where it's like you told us you'd run all our stuff for us.

0:45:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, we keep making stuff. So the other part of this is the is the cap table part I'm just fascinated by because. Because it, the rules of the game are completely changed. And how do you negotiate who gets what now?

0:45:58 - Leo Laporte
Well, now SoftBank is in the mix right. Softbank, in this newest raise, which was this week, OpenAI is finalizing a $40 billion funding round. It would be one of the largest startup financings of all time and SoftBank is expected to contribute $30 billion.

0:46:16 - Jeff Jarvis
That's in addition to $ 30 billion they're given stargate and don't forget that that's 30 billion only if it is converted to full for profit, otherwise it's minus.

0:46:26 - Leo Laporte
It's minus 10 billion uh, it's funny because when softbank said we're going to put 30 billion into stargate, elon said I know, I know they don't have the money. He tweeted, he tweeted I don't have the money. Elon is really throwing grenades and all of this because it's it's a competitive thing at this point for him the Tico yeah yeah, so uh, the open AI funding, according to the Journal, is divided across two trenches.

The company will initially receive 10 billion dollars. It can receive another 30 billion by the end of this year. If it competes, completes the for-profit change right and if the restructuring doesn't take place by the end of the year, it's just 10 instead of 30. So it's.

0:47:07 - Jeff Jarvis
I thought it was but jesus.

0:47:08 - Leo Laporte
Wow, yeah yeah, so it's going to get 10 now and it'll get either another 10 or another 30.

0:47:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, plus where the court I mean elon is suing to prevent the conversion. That's right, and he could drag this out through the end of the year and then buy, buy 30 billion he's tried to tank it already. That was that kind of kooky offer he made well, he's hanging out with a guy who knows how to delay things in courts. Yeah, who's that?

0:47:36 - Leo Laporte
oh, oh, the other guy, the yeah, the the redhead the other guy yeah, yeah, the other guy, you know, it's he who shall not be named oh, that's interesting, but, by the way, so.

0:47:46 - Jeff Jarvis
So Trump said today. Supposedly he told the cabinet don't worry, I'm not getting political.

0:47:51 - Leo Laporte
I just said he who shall not be named.

0:47:53 - Jeff Jarvis
He told the cabinet that, oh, the other one's going to be gone in a few months, which?

0:47:57 - Leo Laporte
That was interesting, yeah, but then the.

0:47:58 - Jeff Jarvis
FT just has a headline Musk says no, he's not leaving. Yeah well, this will be interesting to watch.

0:48:04 - Leo Laporte
Remember, as a consulting employee, not an official employee of the government. He has 130 days in that job. That ends end of May, not coincidentally. I had picked, we had a pool back before right, I think was right after the election, and I had picked June 1st as the day that the divorce would happen. Some had picked sooner, but I I'm going to stand by my prediction of June 1st.

Elon is getting sued himself because a startup founder says you stole the name grok now grok which is the name of the open a, or rather the xai uh chatbot, of course, is named robert from robert heinlein.

Right, it's the stranger in strange land. But uh, there is another uh company that has the trademark uh, and in fact the us patent and trademark office says we're going to suspend grok's trademark application because the agency argued the name could be confused with that of two other companies ai chip maker, grok with a q and software provider grok stream. But now a third company called bisley says no, no, we've got grok. Where's Heinlein's estate in all of this? Bisley says he came up with the name during a brainstorming session with a colleague who used the word as a verb, as I have, as we all have in our sophomore dorm rooms.

0:49:31 - Jeff Jarvis
It's probably not even trademarkable for that reason.

0:49:34 - Richard Campbell
Is it, I don't know, as it was defined by Heinlein in his book in the first place. It was a verb.

0:49:38 - Leo Laporte
For that reason is it I don't know as it was defined by Heinlein in his book in the first place. Yeah, it's the Martian verb to understand.

0:49:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, so really, maybe the Martians have prior claim well, that's why Elon's gonna go up there to negotiate with him.

0:49:50 - Leo Laporte
Shah says he tried to trade Market in 2021. He was in the midst of launching an ai powered app for meetings called grok, when musk announced his chatbot with the same day it name. It was a day I'll never forget. Shaw says I woke up and looked at my phone and there were so many messages from friends saying did you get acquired by elon? Congrats anyway. That the whole thing is in limbo now, not just because of this, but because the USPTO says well, there's these other two people.

0:50:25 - Richard Campbell
And also the nature of trademarks. That's nothing weird, right? Yeah, trademarking is a hard job, yeah.

0:50:32 - Leo Laporte
We have the Twit trademark for another few years and there was some concern about twitter when, a couple of years after we trademarked twit decided to make that the name of their social network. Um, we weren't happy about it.

0:50:49 - Richard Campbell
We talked to them sternly and that's all I can say um well, you're required to defend your trademarks, right?

0:50:57 - Leo Laporte
I think that's the deal, show that you sent a letter. We care, or you, or you give it up more than a letter. Let me tell you. Um, anyway, uh, elon did do actually very curious. Now, richard, you're the as the autodidact, maybe you can explain this. Um, it seems apparently to be a violation of sec rules because the same financial outfit was on both sides of this transaction. Elon said on friday he'd sold x, sold big air quotes on that uh, to xai, which he also owns in what the new york times called an unusual arrangement the asset.

0:51:43 - Richard Campbell
This is asset propping. It's a pretty normal thing when your values have been tanking like crazy. That's the point, isn't it?

0:51:50 - Leo Laporte
uh. The all stock deal value xai at 80 billion and exit 33 billion right.

0:51:56 - Richard Campbell
Well, more importantly now you, now you get a year to restate in the merge, so you get a year to write your ship interesting, yeah, because neither is worth anything really right now really it's all fiction, right and it's all probably held like yeah and both are losing money even in all, yeah, even if the if you know somebody kicked off a lawsuit for an audit, you've got a couple of years. So again, just munch the math together. Now nobody can assess value for a while, until new things are done. You buy some time, right?

0:52:30 - Jeff Jarvis
What about the impact on Tesla?

0:52:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's because you're talking about the fact that it's thought it's that elon financed his purchase of x that's what I read somewhere. Yeah, by borrowing 13 billion dollars, using the tesla stock as collateral. And if?

0:52:46 - Richard Campbell
the collateral in general. Yeah, well, he and it's still got an issue, without a doubt, but there's still gonna be a call he's always got the risk of a call. It's not just the the twitter purchase, it's also how he lives, right it's all, it's all floating routinely, it's all this is also late breaking here from the ft.

0:53:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Trump is kicking off a sale of 2.3 billion dollars.

0:53:10 - Leo Laporte
In truth, social stake oh, yeah, he's gonna cash in. Yeah, he's gonna cash in um, what was that?

0:53:18 - Richard Campbell
a moments clause you people have. What was that again?

0:53:22 - Benito Gonzalez
that's only for peanut farms, peter. Oh the emoluments. Yeah, we don't do those anymore.

0:53:28 - Leo Laporte
That was a. That's a.

0:53:29 - Jeff Jarvis
That's very quaint era very 1776.

0:53:33 - Richard Campbell
we don't, it's not my document, but I've heard you guys have one this quote from the new york times.

0:53:41 - Leo Laporte
I love this. Linda. Yaccarino x's chief executive wrote on x of the deal. The future could not be brighter. X declined to comment. It feels like they've left something isn't she?

0:53:55 - Richard Campbell
the ceo access doesn't she? Isn't she? Yeah, I don't x by definition.

0:53:59 - Leo Laporte
It feels like these are redacted documents, but no, this is an actual sentence in the new york times.

0:54:05 - Richard Campbell
No, this. This sounds like a chat. Gpt two sentence.

0:54:09 - Leo Laporte
That's what it sounds like x has declined to comment, probably sent out a poop emoji, if I know x that would be the logical there to do that anymore, yeah, um, you can get a stochastic parrot for that, for sure, yeah yeah, andrew verstine is a professor, ucla law school, quoted in the times.

The elon version uh, the, in other words, uh the version uh of of the deal. That elon is saying is it does seem to say I have a company, maybe not bankrupt, just not my crown jewel. I will buy it in a way that makes it look like sss using one of my other companies, which, incidentally, is pretty deep in the hole too. Anyway, x's financial outlook has declined, but it's recently gone up quite a bit.

0:55:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Remember, uh, the banks wrote off a lot of the debt so what happens if you've already written off the debt and now you're getting?

0:55:08 - Leo Laporte
I think they're out of luck. I don't know, do they still have the collateral? I don't know it's on. This is why I was hoping, richard being a financial genius.

0:55:17 - Richard Campbell
It's a tax thing if you've done the write down, you get a tax break. You can't take it back because you can't take it back, it's done. I mean everything. This is our law. Everything's fixable, with enough lawyers, admittedly, like you can. But would you like you've?

0:55:33 - Jeff Jarvis
so did the drawdown already? Did the lenders for uh twitter get actual money out of this?

0:55:40 - Speaker 5
they got stock they wouldn't have gotten money, they would get stock in the combined company uh, and it was.

0:55:46 - Leo Laporte
I think it was a 30, 70 split, so 30 x 70 xai so it is also a private deal, right?

0:55:54 - Richard Campbell
so they don't actually have to file with the sec, like nobody really knows there's whatever they decided to say in the public. They're not required to say anything.

0:56:01 - Leo Laporte
They're not on any governance yeah, well, there's at least some governance, because again, irs. But well, there is there is apparently a rule that you can't use the same uh bank for both sides of the transaction, which I presume is to protect investors.

0:56:19 - Richard Campbell
No well, yeah, that's also just played old-fashioned kiting too right, like you're just playing games with me at that point, right?

0:56:27 - Leo Laporte
replets ceo. Uh, I'm john. Massad says learning to code is a waste of time I guess I'd buy his vibe yeah, it's very vibey.

Uh, replet was a great place to code because you it had many, many languages and you you would host the coding engine and it was. It was really a kind of a cool company for a long time, but then they got into this ai thing and now it's an ai coding tool and, of course, as a result, replet ceo is saying don't study to learn, don't study coding now. It's a waste of time. How do you feel about that, richard? Should I learn to code.

0:57:10 - Richard Campbell
I was thinking of going back to school I think you still have to express your intent. That gets generated into code whether you write it or not. A good point, it's still the thinking, right? Yeah? And Andre Karthapathy, who originally coined the term vibe coding, was talking about coders experimenting with the language tools to generate code. Because it's an experience. It's not quality code and it's not necessarily good outcomes. You'll often have rabbit holes, but it is an experimental approach, to you know, challenging an idea, seeing some possibilities.

0:57:48 - Leo Laporte
Maybe that stimulates some ideas for you to write something usable in code we talked about this uh on windows weekly, uh, earlier, um, and he said it's good for weekend projects, which you point out means well, you, obviously, if it's good for weekend projects, you're a coder, because nobody's not a coder is doing weekend projects. Um, uh, carpa, I can give you carpathy's uh tweet here. I thought I pulled it up for windows weekly. I asked who code? I asked who coined the term vibe coding of my perplexity and uh came up with this tweet. Where is it? Here we go? Oh, do I have to? Oh, no, I'm not. I'm not running the board. You are benita. It's a new kind of coding. Andrea kapathi says I call it vibe coding. By the way, kapathi was one of the founders of open ai, worked for a long time at uh, director of ai at tesla, so, uh, you know he knows a little bit about wherever he speaks. There's a new kind of coding I call vibe coding, where you fully give into the vibes wait a minute, I'm doing the wrong voice express exponential, embrace exponentials and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the llms are getting too good.

Also, I just talked to composer with super whisper, so I barely even touched the keyboard. I asked for the dumbest things like quote decrease the padding on the sidebar by half, because I'm too lazy to find it. He says I accept all always. I don't read the diffs anymore. Wow, when I get error messages this is a good one I just copy paste them in with no comment. Usually that fixes it. The code and this is what's scary to me grows beyond my usual comprehension. I'd have to fully read, really read through it for a while. Sometimes the llms can't fix a bug, so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. All right, I'm done here. I'm going off to burning.

0:59:58 - Richard Campbell
Man, have a great weekend you left off the pulls on the bong in that, but yeah I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff and copy paste stuff and it mostly works.

1:00:11 - Leo Laporte
Dude does not sound like that at all. In fact he's a pretty hard-headed engineer. This was a.

1:00:16 - Richard Campbell
This was in february, I mean it's all things have changed since then yeah, it probably should have been published april 1st, but still, yeah, maybe but I have to say uh, dario ahmede of anthropic says 90 percent.

1:00:30 - Leo Laporte
90 within six months of all code could be generated by AI. 90%. That doesn't mean it'll be good code, I'll take that bet.

1:00:41 - Benito Gonzalez
I'll take that bet. You want to take that bet.

1:00:44 - Richard Campbell
You wander around GitHub for a while.

1:00:45 - Benito Gonzalez
90% of all code oh that's so good. Well, that seems a little yeah. If he's suggesting that so much code is going to be generated from now, between now and six months, that it's actually 90% of volume more than we have now.

1:00:56 - Jeff Jarvis
It's crazy, but. But. But you know, isn't there a new definition of code? Potentially, that any time you ask an LLM for something, in essence it's creating code. You just don't see it.

1:01:07 - Richard Campbell
Yeah well, I try a no code solution, like Power Platform or any of the others. There's still code. You just don't, just don't see it.

1:01:15 - Leo Laporte
Actually, carpathy I. I watched that three and a half hour video. Have you ever? Have you ever watched that yet, jeff, I tried to get through it all. It's very long. It's very good bet, and we were talking about it also on windows weekly. I think it's the best description of how yeah, yeah, it's great.

1:01:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you watch the whole thing, richard?

1:01:36 - Richard Campbell
yeah, I did. Oh, you're better. You're a better man than I, or you have no life.

1:01:39 - Jeff Jarvis
One of the two.

1:01:42 - Leo Laporte
In any event, one of the things he says, which I think is interesting, is that often the best thing to ask an AI to do is generate code. For instance, there's a famous story where you say how many R's in strawberry? And I learned this from Carpathi's video, because the LLM doesn't actually have words in it, doesn't have the word strawberry in it, it has tokens that may represent more than a word, maybe represent multiple words or parts of a word, so it that when it sees strawberry it doesn't see three R's, it just sees a token. So it often says two or one or five or none. But if you and Karpathy uses an example, if you say generate the code or he just actually just adds the phrase use code, then the LLM writes Python code that takes the word strawberry, counts the Rs and returns the right result.

1:02:37 - Richard Campbell
And that's a really good example of how an llm is ignorant but can write code and often can give you the right answer if you ask it to use code one of the advantages that code has is that the source of it is places like github, where it has already been compiled and it's already been validated, like in general, the quality information on github and code is higher quality than the information on the rest of the internet. Right, so the llm is a much better chance of rendering something useful from its data set I.

1:03:13 - Leo Laporte
I do think that the interesting goal is to come up with code that hasn't been written before. I think it was Stephen Wolfram who said this in fact I know it was is that one of the things LLMs can do they work on patterns, they notice patterns and they repeat patterns. But one of the things they can do, because of the depth of their knowledge, the speed of their computation, is they may spot patterns humans do not sure and so, as a result, they may actually write code based on what they've seen before, that a human has never written, that a human may never normally write.

1:03:55 - Richard Campbell
Well, we're seeing this. We're seeing this in medicine now too right the fact that they're able to take all the telemetry of a trauma room, all of the cameras, all of the instrumentation, and consolidate it in a generative ai model. They're finding trends in actions that people didn't pick up that are improving outcomes exactly that's the power of it and I think that's exciting.

1:04:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, is it agi?

1:04:18 - Richard Campbell
No, it's just Well. So there's this argument that the side effect of our current information system world that's built up enough knowledge that we no longer can manage it. We've now started to make tools that can manage it when properly utilized, so that we take advantage of what we've built.

1:04:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, so, richard, for the benefit of our audience and me, because we agree with each other, and I want to have ammunition. Uh, tell me why you stand back here. Do you tell me why you think agi is a long way to say bs?

1:04:51 - Richard Campbell
well, because don't put words in his mouth?

1:04:53 - Jeff Jarvis
you already said it.

1:04:54 - Richard Campbell
You already said it he, we agree, because token assembly is not thought right Like let's be clear, and the smart people like Hinton and so forth have already said as much while quietly cashing their checks. I'm not that clever. I've just read good books that have talked more deeply about what consciousness and thinking and logic processing actually represents and said, hey, the software we're writing isn't these things so all right, but here's my counter to that.

1:05:23 - Leo Laporte
And by the way the jury's out, I don't know, no one knows the jury's out.

1:05:27 - Jeff Jarvis
I wish I had some sand with me, go ahead.

1:05:29 - Leo Laporte
But the counter to that is what makes you think we're anything more than a token analyzer and a probabilistic, probabilistic prediction machine. Fine, what are we doing? That is, that is better mark twain thought we were just we're summarizing.

1:05:48 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, we project with few samples. We summarize off of projections.

1:05:54 - Leo Laporte
We can or order probably order sets of steps with incomplete information, like well, but I would submit that what we do is based on life data and reduce them, but it's based on our life experience. We are the sum of our life experience. Absent that, are we anything? I mean sure, ingesting the internet.

1:06:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So. So there's a wonderful book that I probably talked about a few years ago that I wrote about, called how History Gets Things Wrong by Alex, it's a wonderful book and the argument is that the theory of mind is BS. So trying to track after the theory of mind in computers is all wrong, because that's not how we operate. We basically have a huge VCR in our head. When we hit a circumstance, we play a tape and we go down the path that we went to before. Just like in.

LLM. Well, no, so let me ask this question to both of you. Yes, a whole bunch of talk about how. I had a discussion last week with Jason about reasoning models and all they're doing is cutting up a task into slices. Is that reasoning?

1:07:08 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna let richard start. He's. He's actually thinking, which is rare on this show.

1:07:12 - Jeff Jarvis
We don't do this usually richard, I had a bong.

1:07:15 - Richard Campbell
You got to say it again, sorry, I had an internet bong there oh, okay, well, I'm giving you credit, we're getting, we are getting deep, profound thought.

1:07:22 - Leo Laporte
We are getting some hits on richard's internet and I apologize. We're talking about the reasons we're out of sync and things. Yeah reasoning.

1:07:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, all the models say we have a reasoning model. Reasoning model, yeah, what I'm questioning is what is reasoning? It seems to me that it's more than just slicing up a task into multiple parts.

1:07:42 - Richard Campbell
Well, you would think that, yeah, no, they're abusing the word reasoning there because it's good for marketing. I love richard. This is why I'm so. Yeah, which is normal. Start with the fact that artificial intelligence was coined by a guy who's trying to raise money from the military. It's always been a marketing firm. That's really not artificial and it's not intelligent like. None of that has been true. Right, we're just abusing words here.

1:08:06 - Leo Laporte
There are larger concepts to reason and they tend towards more philosophical than they are technological so the reason to me, the reasoning I think and correct me if I'm wrong but the the difference that happened with DeepSeq and other reasoning models was they started using reinforcement learning more. And that's actually a very interesting slant on this, because you take an LLM which is basically tokenizing a vast amount of information and figuring out the probabilities of the next token, and it is completely stochastic. But then you don't stop with that because that gives you nothing. To get a chat and this is what Karpathy talks about in this video To get a chat box now you have to tune it. One of the newer tech it's actually not new, but one of the hot techniques right now is this reinforcement learning. Hot techniques right now is this reinforcement learning. And this was what was used with alpha zero.

Deep mind's really first success was this chess playing computer alpha alpha and then alpha go, uh, but both of the first ones were rules based. They, they, they gave it a lot of games and said this is what a game looks like. Just as you might, if you were doing radiology, say here's a bunch of x-rays, these have, these have cancers, these do not, and generate a rule set out of that. That's, that's the LLM way. Reinforcement learning is more like alpha zero, where all they told alpha zero was these are the rules of Go Now play a billion games it did in just a matter of hours. It played itself almost a huge, vast number of games and learned from the games it played itself.

1:09:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Is that reasoning, or is that just the biggest A-B test you've ever had? Reasoning is a fuzzy word.

1:09:52 - Leo Laporte
That's a word we use. That's what these reasoning models are doing. Is this so-called reinforcement learning, where they get to the end of the game and it was bad computer, you lost, or a good computer, you won, and after a series of those it actually became better than any human, furthermore, could come up with moves no human could come up with. It wasn't trained on human games, it trained itself.

1:10:15 - Richard Campbell
So that's, and the go players that played it said it played weirdly like it did. Yeah, non-human. It was non-human, but it was. Either way. You're training a set of weights into a neural net. So what you have is two different training strategies essentially an adversarial training strategy, which was take the rules and play against yourself, and an analytical or, more you know, generative approach, where you learn from the existing data set of games. But either way, you're just trying to generate a set of weights. There is no reason.

1:10:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, richard, to your point about brand. I just put in the rundown something I recommended this guy for a future guest, thomas Haig, I think it's pronounced, is a computer historian, line 94. He has a wonderful PowerPoint for a lecture about artificial intelligence, the history of a brand. I love it and he says it's not pejorative. A brand is about ownership, a brand is about promotion, a brand is about marketing, right? Exactly what you're saying. And to go back through the history here, he was the historian in residence at the Computer History Museum sessions about the birth, the pioneers of desktop publishing. So I just looked him up because he was really interesting and this is his perspective about trying to look at AI.

1:11:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Gary's book. By the way, gary Rivlin, our guest last week, ai Valley covers a lot of this as well. Yep, this is true, uh, but I okay, it's I.

1:11:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I think you use this as a way. It's not wrong. It's just saying that that I think it's. Richard's point is that that we've we've given it this name, yeah, that their name is meaningless but?

1:11:55 - Leo Laporte
but when we say reasoning, what are you doing? What's the? That's your branding for what you're doing, which isn't necessarily reasoning. I mean oh, I mean part of what you know, you're doing anything I'm not even saying.

1:12:10 - Jeff Jarvis
The reason is the thing that we should expect them to do that that's the wrong time.

1:12:14 - Leo Laporte
We don't even know what reasoning is. Well, there you just nailed it, leo.

1:12:17 - Benito Gonzalez
we don't even know what reasoning is. Well there, you just nailed it, leo. We don't even know what reasoning is, so how?

1:12:19 - Leo Laporte
are you saying that?

1:12:20 - Benito Gonzalez
the AI has reasoning, then how are you?

1:12:21 - Leo Laporte
claiming it doesn't. But how are you saying it doesn't? Because what is what we call reasoning?

1:12:26 - Benito Gonzalez
No, no, no, you have to prove the positive. You can't prove a negative, you have to prove the positive.

1:12:39 - Richard Campbell
Well, no, how it proves. Now you're getting into that turing test game which is I'll see, I'll know intelligence when I see it.

1:12:44 - Leo Laporte
And yet I keep saying faces and bowling balls and cars, right like humans, are predisposed to anthropomorphize because of the good survival strategy I agree, and I would also submit that we, we have a self-inflated, we have an inflated sense of self, yeah, and we imagine that what we are doing, this magical thing inside this gray matter, is somehow superior to what a machine could do. And okay.

1:13:14 - Jeff Jarvis
Well there we agree that we're setting the wrong standard here. We're saying replicate us, why limit yourself to us?

1:13:20 - Leo Laporte
no, we're not no, I, that's what a super intelligence is. It's far better than us, well, but only in science fiction yeah, well, so far so far you know, you know what, when? When the Wright brothers said, you know, we think we could fly in this thing. People thought you could, you. But there's thing people thought you could.

1:13:38 - Richard Campbell
There's a definition of flying yeah, there's a clear definition of flying yeah, people were flying before the Wright brothers or the Wright brothers jazz, which was showed powered flight over a distance more than the energy that was in entered it would have lifted. They weren't gliding they were flying. Yeah, that's right, but people thought they were crazy anybody would get into a contraption that looked like that was fairly not.

1:14:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, it's like. It's like getting into a tesla right now on auto drive, yeah, yeah there you go.

1:14:12 - Leo Laporte
Here is what perplexity says. A reasoning model is. The core components of reasoning models are structured at formats like semantic networks, ontologies and graphs. That's a knowledge representation. Then there's an inference engine and then there's a learning algorithm.

1:14:28 - Jeff Jarvis
This is tautological as hell.

1:14:29 - Richard Campbell
Yes, it is yeah.

1:14:31 - Leo Laporte
Deductive reasoning.

1:14:32 - Richard Campbell
inductive reasoning abductive reasoning yeah they've really built a bit of software there to create, to trigger the anthropomorphic perception of reasoning from the software yeah, yeah, yeah it's well showing you words, whether they're accurate or not right, that that appear to present a chain to the outcome you wanted.

1:14:51 - Jeff Jarvis
That's reasoning and I'm not even sure that that's actually part of the process that results in the end.

1:14:57 - Richard Campbell
That's I tend to agree with you.

1:14:58 - Jeff Jarvis
This is it's almost a kind of progress bar, it's um it's not necessarily progress to what it's actually doing, it's I'm gonna, I'm gonna occupy you yeah, instead of putting up a spinning ball or a right I'm gonna spit out text, because I think that's

1:15:12 - Leo Laporte
what I do, that's true, yeah I do think there is something going on behind that as well, but there's something, but I don't think it's.

1:15:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't think it's.

1:15:19 - Leo Laporte
That's displaying, it's breaking down what it's doing is breaking down the the proposed problem into smaller bits that it can or at least creating a perception. The problem maybe it's not doing that. All right, uh, bloomberg has been using ai for summaries, but the new york times is quick to point out that it has had a rocky start with ai summary I mean this is one of the most popular features of these llms right now is summarization. You'd think it could do that pretty well, well, bloomberg has issued, according to the times, again a competitor.

1:15:53 - Richard Campbell
There's no sense of meaning well, and the question has always been if the summary of the meeting was in was bad, how would you know, because you only read the summary I am on the wrong show I thought this was a pro ai show all right fine, oh no, I'm pro ai. We are enthusiasts, we truly are.

1:16:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, we're trying to stop when I, when I, when I was a tv critic, I said my job was to expect the best of tv. Yeah, right, and so I was. I was gonna be more disappointed than anyone else when it was bad. So, richard and I love ai and want it to work, but we can't stand it being taken over by this bs right. Well, how do you know?

1:16:33 - Leo Laporte
it's bs.

1:16:34 - Richard Campbell
Until it happens, you, you're, you've just decided it's all bs when I see it right I don't know how you would know it's bs um, it's a pretty simple set of tests, really, right, like you have to walk through this.

1:16:47 - Leo Laporte
You have to walk through the sequence and you know, take all the different pieces I would say there's a kind of a strong current of uh proofs of success in ai. Here's an. Here's an article from the mit technology review uh, the first uh trial of generative ai psychotherapy shows it might help with depression.

1:17:12 - Jeff Jarvis
This comes after last week's story in which uh open ai opened it stuff up to that kind of research and said, well, it's a problem which is this is research, this is normal research. They, they do point out you.

1:17:24 - Richard Campbell
You know hello eliza from vine bomb in 1968. Come a long way since that though, and yet people talk to it for hours. Yeah, that's true?

1:17:34 - Leo Laporte
uh, they say it not. This research does not validate the wave of AI therapy bots flooding the market. This is a clinical trial of a therapy bot that said, or suggests it was as effective as human therapy for participants with depression, anxiety or risk for developing eating disorders. The team was led by psychiatric researchers and psychologists at the geisel school of medicine at dartmouth. They built a tool called therabot. The results came out end of the month, last month in a journal oh yeah, the new england journal of medicine.

1:18:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Not a bad journal, peer-reviewed, I presume if you might want to go from there to line 83.

1:18:24 - Leo Laporte
Let me finish.

1:18:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I thought you breathed. You see, you took a moment. I thought that was it.

1:18:29 - Leo Laporte
To test the bot, the researchers ran an eight-week clinical trial with 210 participants who had symptoms of depression or generalized anxiety disorder or were high risk for eating disorders. Half had access to Therabot and the control group did not.

1:18:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I want to see the approval memo that was written at the university for that test.

1:18:49 - Leo Laporte
The rest of you. You're on your own, Suck it.

1:18:52 - Richard Campbell
Let's face it. Why was ChatGP so popular? They got 100 million users in the two months. Well, they ran it over christmas, where everybody's depressed anyway. They wanted something to talk to. The software was close enough like they could have gotten a dog.

1:19:06 - Leo Laporte
They would have had a better outcome participants responded to prompts from the ai and initiated conversations. So you'd get a prompt and then you would respond and initiate a conversation, averaging about 10 messages a day. Participants with depression experienced a 51% reduction in symptoms the best result in the study. Anxiety 31%. Eating disorders 19% Reduction in concerns about body image and weight. These are all self-reported through surveys.

1:19:35 - Richard Campbell
Okay, Okay, so questionable survey. But also isn't amazing how, when you get a chance to talk to someone about your problems, you feel better? Even even something, as it turns out that doesn't matter, like just voice it it's kind of like being on a podcast yeah, you are talking to someone here, though, that is it it's a matrix.

1:19:57 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, wait a minute you don't really know.

1:19:59 - Leo Laporte
Okay, correction the study was published in n-a-j-m-a-i, a journal by the New England Journal of Medicine, not in the New England. Journal of Medicine okay.

1:20:12 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know if it's even peer-reviewed, it's just something they publish yeah just to go to the mit uh yeah, this is I meant to link to the actual study oh, I don't know.

1:20:24 - Leo Laporte
This is uh line 31, as you are want to say if we're going to trade lines here, I'll, I'll die guys, I'll see you. Here's a line for you china's already testing testing AI-powered robots in factories. Do you care about that?

1:20:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Wait, wait, wait. You skipped my other link. Oh, you wanted something, it's related.

1:20:45 - Leo Laporte
You thought this was democracy. Is that what you thought? All right, what line, what line, go ahead. No wait a minute. Hold it because I got to do an ad anyway, and then, and then your line, you're going to want to come back to your mind because my line is good. We will answer the question whose?

1:21:01 - Jeff Jarvis
line, is it anyway nice in? Paul paul was shocked the first time he was on the show about how we talked to each other I just like the podcast clickbait that's going on.

1:21:08 - Leo Laporte
That's the best that you can't have clickbait within the podcast they've already clicked. It's nothing. Nothing we can do to increase the clicks at this point. Uh, you're watching intelligent machines. It's great to have you. Richard Campbell, a nice foil. I didn't realize you were going to team up and gang up on me.

1:21:29 - Richard Campbell
But okay, jeff telegraphed his hand right at the beginning. It's like that's my man, I know where I'm.

1:21:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah host of radio and damn it a man whose intellect I respect gosh darn it. He is, of course, a regular on windows weekly and is sticking around for a long wednesday, but when you're in vegas and you don't have anything to do, what better?

1:21:49 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, what's the boring town?

1:21:50 - Richard Campbell
there's nothing to do there oh goodness like, especially if you're any good at math yeah, probability, you understand it.

1:21:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're in the wrong place. Yeah, they didn't build those hotels based on all the money they were given winners. Yeah, uh, also with us. Jeff jarvis, emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the craig narmok graduate school of journalism at the city university of new york, now at uhony Brook Great school, suny Stony Brook. That it is. And Montclair no teaching duties though this spring, not right now, not right now. Maybe in the fall or are you done with those undergraduate?

1:22:27 - Jeff Jarvis
types. I'm writing syllabi.

1:22:31 - Leo Laporte
Syllabi. So are you writing a book? Is the question. I think you are.

1:22:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, in fact I think yesterday I got a draft. This is the AI book you were editing. No, no, no, no, no. This is the cultural history of the line of type. And you're editing a book on AI Very cool. That's not announced yet. That stuff will come, it's all right.

1:22:55 - Leo Laporte
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1:27:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, we're still trying to figure out exactly what uses well, that's where you might want to go to line 83, for I think a very useful thing what is you guys?

1:27:46 - Leo Laporte
are you working in? Concert now like you're gotta, did you send out a memo to each?

1:27:51 - Richard Campbell
other what's going on? Listen, the professor knows how to pick up a second. It's sitting there. He grabbed it and he ran. He picked it up, all right it's clickbait.

1:27:59 - Leo Laporte
Is this the story about tinder? Yes, they want you to flirt with an ai bot before you talk to a human. I love the name of this. It's called the game game. You got game, uh, open. A ai built it for him. It lets you practice your pickup lines.

1:28:17 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a speech to speech ai technology that creates voices and scenarios so ridiculous you can't help but laugh, taking the pressure off and making it easy to test your game without overthinking it. Oh, this is from april fools, is it?

1:28:33 - Leo Laporte
it was launched yesterday. Oh oh. It says it's no prank, this is from Fast Company. Yeah, okay, they say it's not an April Fool's joke though.

1:28:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I can't try because of course I don't have Tinder, nor am I going to.

1:28:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, your wife wouldn't like that so much. Well, I'll sign up. Lisa trusts me. No, maybe I better not Next year. I was going to say something but I don't want to get me in trouble. Our son signed up for Tinder. We were very happy. We said, yeah, go get her Swipe right. So the goal is to blur the line between digital and the real world, something Tinder has been exploring with events like the single summer series, chaotic singles party and swipe off. I guess I'm just left. I don't. I'm not part of the uh the crowd here. I'm not. I don't understand anything that they're saying this is the story we need

1:29:34 - Jeff Jarvis
to go through.

1:29:35 - Benito Gonzalez
We need paris for this story paris, we need a young person.

1:29:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, we do. We'll hold up the next week. We'll do it again, right?

1:29:40 - Leo Laporte
a young single person. So, uh, fast, company. Eve upton clark, writing for fest company, said uh, she went to the launch event, which was hosted by open ai, by the way, or at open ai's new york city office.

1:29:53 - Richard Campbell
She said I got to try the game game myself, let's just say my gym meet, cute, didn't exactly end in a rom com style kiss in the rain you know, the thing that this story brought to my mind was something professor scott galloway was talking about it that he found some stat about more than half of young men had never asked a woman out in person, and so depressing that just sort of you know he's they don't go on dates anymore.

1:30:22 - Jeff Jarvis
This is where. This is where he drives me nuts. He expects he wants it all go back to 1960 exactly they don't do that anymore.

1:30:28 - Richard Campbell
But you also see that this might be a tool to encourage you to at least experiment in a way that won't get you slapped in the face and uh, and maybe have unless it encourages you to be a jerk who knows how. There's a whole you know there's a whole other direction there, the negging direction if you want to get ugly. But yeah, yeah, hopefully the software that was a good story.

1:30:52 - Jeff Jarvis
I liked it. It's a good story, it's fun and it was related.

1:30:55 - Leo Laporte
You see there was a, there was a flow to the show would you guys, please use your, your you know uh investigative noggins to tell me if this is bs, an april fool's joke, or true. This came from a site I am not familiar with called hack read x was hit by a 2.8 billion profile data leak.

1:31:20 - Richard Campbell
The story is that a disgruntled employee on his way out the door part of the mass layoffs can be yeah it's, yeah, disgruntled employee, but it's also all over everything now, so okay, so this was the first place I saw it, but now it is confirmed. Now, yeah forbes has got it. I presume we'll hear it from troy hunt soon enough, as soon as the data set shows up on the dark web the original post by thinking.

1:31:44 - Leo Laporte
One states that the data around 400 gigabytes worth was x filtrated during messy layoffs at x. The poster claims they tried contacting x through multiple methods but received no response. Join the club. Did you get the poop emoji? Frustrated with the lack of acknowledgement from x and the general public, they, they decided to merge the newly leaked data with another infamous data breach from a couple of years ago. And now there are billions of names and information. What would you get? Well, it's just the information twitter had, which is account creation dates, user ids, screen names, profile descriptions and urls, location, time zone settings, display names, follower counts, tweet count, friend count, source of last tweet, status settings. Um, it's not, I mean I. You don't get phone numbers, I guess, even though twitter does have those from a lot of people. Um, they say well, wait a minute. Well, how do you get 200, 2.8 billion when there are only 335 a million, uh monthly active users? They're all bots, they're all bots, they're all bots. So many bots. Uh, x has not confirmed, x has not said anything.

1:33:06 - Richard Campbell
Uh yeah, no, you know what, I'm not going to trust them. I'll trust troy hunt. I'll watch. Have I've been pwned? Yeah?

1:33:12 - Leo Laporte
watch it with interest, although did you see that troy hunt got pwned?

1:33:15 - Richard Campbell
yep and immediately published it too Good for him.

1:33:19 - Leo Laporte
We talked about it yesterday on Security. Now he fell for a phishing scam an email that purported to come from MailChimp, which is his mail service provider, saying hey, we had to close your account because of spam. This is a very common email you might get.

1:33:35 - Richard Campbell
Log into your account and tell conf you know, instead of going into mailchimp by hand, which is the right thing to do, and he thought he was safe because he clicked the button it asked for the password login. Okay, fine, but he had to factor on it.

1:33:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah right, that's supposed to protect you. But here's the problem bad guys now are using automation with these attacks so that they can act so quickly that they can redirect your 2fa code log in. They downloaded his entire database of subscribers and logged out before troy, who almost immediately realized oh my god, because?

nothing happened when he finished the entry, nothing, he didn't log in. He went oh God, this is fishing. So he immediately logged in, changed his password. It was still too late, because they're automating this stuff. Yeah, yeah, and good on him, for I mean yeah there's one thing about Troy Hunt is not. It's a hypocrite like his own breach is now listed in. Have I been published right there? Yeah, oh man, good for him painful?

1:34:41 - Richard Campbell
yeah, and he did, and he was dealing with it from iceland too yeah, yeah, he says he was jet lag.

1:34:46 - Leo Laporte
He had lots of good reasons for it, but it's. But look, if somebody who's troy hunt runs a site about data breaches, he advises people on security. His site will tell you if you've got a password that's been used before. I mean it's a it's. It's been used by Google and and Firefox to and all the major password to folks to see if your passwords been in a breach. It's a race. He's the guy.

1:35:12 - Richard Campbell
He's the man and we also a damn fine-looking Aussie and still he's a proper super dude. No two ways about that, yeah he fell for it. Yeah, we all have moments of weakness. None of us is perfect all the time, even when you're in the profession. Oh God, that's got to be embarrassing, yeah it's tough.

1:35:30 - Leo Laporte
Uh, good list on Tech Crunch. I hope they keep this up to date. Uh, this is dated March 30th, so it's two days old. A list of all the models released this year and what they're good at. So if you've been looking around for which AI model to use, I hear a lot of I haven't used Gemini 2.5, but a lot of people saying good things about this and, in fact, on the most recent leader leaderboards it's coming in on top.

1:35:59 - Richard Campbell
Yeah the diamond rocks episode we're publishing tomorrow is, uh, talking to dr drode virtual about measuring the quality of llms. Ah, exactly that problem. Like I asked that question all the time, what's your? You know, what are you using? Oh, this one, it's the best. It's like, how do you measure best? Like, what is that to you?

1:36:25 - Leo Laporte
ask him about ai arena. I wonder if, uh he, if that's a a good place or not. Um, for, for seeing this, this is the one a lot of, I think. This is it. No, this is the wrong. Oh, this is cool though, yeah. Oh, look at I'm sorry. I got distracted. Look it's reasoning.

1:36:42 - Richard Campbell
What am I thinking? Never mind.

1:36:44 - Leo Laporte
It's looking at me. You're looking, stop looking at me. So, anyway, the list. Let's go back to the list. For those of you not watching the video, I went to the wrong site and I got a robot that was following the mouse and I couldn't stop. Chatgb 4.0, the image generation, that's the one you cannot get away from studio ghibli, extraordinary though every but it is amazing, isn't it? It's really beautiful. Yeah, so good that sam altman had to go on x and say please, stop using it you're killing us now.

1:37:15 - Richard Campbell
They're running out of money and it's all going to Microsoft.

1:37:18 - Leo Laporte
It's burning up the servers well, they limit.

1:37:21 - Jeff Jarvis
They limited it to what? Three a month or something, three a day.

1:37:24 - Leo Laporte
Three a week must be. It must be more than three months, maybe three a day. Three a day. I got rate limited pretty quickly but it's really good you made um? I don't know.

1:37:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Let me go look our, our discord alone is uh is burning it up yeah, yeah, they've been doing quite a, quite a few fun things.

1:37:45 - Leo Laporte
Let me go. Uh, I did get a reject. Uh, image wait a minute. Now they're advertising it. Image creation just got better. Chat gpd now thinks a little longer to make more accurate images. Got better chat gpd now thinks a little longer to make more accurate images. Okay, try it. So now you get to create image commands. So I did get a rejection because I asked it. Oh, wait a minute, it looks like it did it. Anyway, I said paint me like your french girls and it you're right about titan.

Oh, titanic prompts and it says I couldn't generate that because request violates our content policies. But now it's generating it. I think I found a workaround, my friends. I'll show you the stuff while it's doing that. I'll show you the stuff I did the other day. This is, um the twit logo done in a renaissance painting style. Nice, not so interesting. I say, and this is pure text use the disaster girl meme and make it look like Disney drew it. Wow, that nailed it.

That's pretty damn amazing. Nailed it. This is the house on fire. The girl's looking arch. Yeah, she's got that little look, mickey.

1:38:51 - Richard Campbell
So I had this discussion with Jason.

1:38:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Is there anything wrong with doing something in the style of?

1:39:00 - Leo Laporte
Jason, is there anything wrong with doing something in the style of is that theft? No, uh, right, yeah. I think TechCrunch interviewed a bunch of a I I'm sorry IP attorneys who said you, it's really almost impossible, uh, to attack somebody who's stealing.

1:39:10 - Richard Campbell
Your style that's not, that's a look and feel thing, right, yeah, well there's trade dress and there have been a successful trade dress lawsuits.

1:39:17 - Leo Laporte
But apparently the courts pretty much say you know you can't say that's. I mean you could look at it and know that this is Grumpy Cat in the Studio Ghibli style. But how would you? How would Studio Ghibli?

1:39:31 - Richard Campbell
Who's suing you, Grumpy Cat or Ghibli?

1:39:35 - Leo Laporte
Maybe here's Mona Lisa in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. I'm pretty sure he's not going to come after me. No, he can't hear you anyway. No, let me see. Let me go back to my uh, rejected image.

1:39:44 - Benito Gonzalez
It's still working on the french girls no, I think that's where it stopped teasing. I think that's where it stopped working yeah, oh yeah.

1:39:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh. I get it said I, I'm not doing this, you can't make me because it didn't give me an image at all last time.

1:39:56 - Leo Laporte
It just gave me the text. I'm sitting on this bonito.

1:39:59 - Richard Campbell
I'm hoping when as far as the eyes and stop. That's brilliant.

1:40:02 - Leo Laporte
I realized there. I don't know, I don't know what it realized. That was the famous line from Titanic that, uh, kate Winslet said to Leonardo DiCaprio when she removed her bodice um, stable, stability ais. We haven't heard about them in a long time. Stability ais, stable. Virtual camera we're going back through that tech crunch. Uh. List of the new, the new models released this year image generation generation startup stability ai has launched a model that can create 3d scenes and camera angles from a single 2D image. You can use it on Hugging Face because it is open weights. Cohere's AYA, aya Vision, a multimodal model called AYA Vision that claims it's the best in class at doing things like captioning images. That, by the way, is a really good use for AI. My blogging platform, microblog when I post an image there will generate an AI-generated description of the image which is invariably better and more detailed than the one I would have written and talk about like the classic.

1:41:12 - Richard Campbell
That was impossible 20 years ago. Right, they were. You know X, y, z.

1:41:17 - Leo Laporte
Five years ago. Yeah, you'd say what's in this image and it goes is that a hot dog?

1:41:21 - Richard Campbell
I don't know but the image net competitions that really kicked off this thing with, that's right yeah, that's exactly 2011, 2012. Right, they had it nailed by 2015.

1:41:31 - Leo Laporte
when I I wish I could find the video of this when I was doing a call for help in Toronto, because a lot of this was happening at the university of toronto.

1:41:39 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, yeah, this is that's where hinton was, and yes, yep we had two people talking about image net.

1:41:46 - Leo Laporte
This must have been 2007 I mean, it was very early showing us, and it was the cat thing where they could distinguish different kinds of cats. It was very impressive. Yeah, could very well have been suits cover. I don't know what it was, if I could find the video. Um, it was very impressive. Yeah, could very well have been suits cover. I don't know what it was, if I could find the video. Um, it was pretty. I think amber found them. It was really impressive and that was many moons ago.

1:42:08 - Richard Campbell
That was 18 years ago so we all saw captures and now it's better what I find interesting is that most people take for granted that that their images will be auto captionedptioned.

1:42:18 - Leo Laporte
Now, yeah, Of course it will. Well, it's really important for alt text right when I post on a social network and I know you hate this, jeff when Mastodon says you didn't put alt text on your image.

1:42:30 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I'm good about it, I do it I do it 99.9% of the time.

1:42:33 - Leo Laporte
Blind users. They're using screen readers. They 9.9% of the blind users. They're using screen readers.

1:42:38 - Jeff Jarvis
They don't know what your image is, but the screen reader will read alt text the thing I wonder is are the people who scold me people who it matters to, or not? Are they doing it on behalf of others? I mean, it's okay if they are, but I'm just curious.

1:42:51 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, probably on behalf of others. I actually have a bot running on my Mastodon that will annoy me. It will say hey, you just posted something without alt text.

1:43:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Although that's now a Mastodon policy.

1:43:04 - Leo Laporte
Is it a policy? Yeah Well, no, it's a policy, but I actually present a bot to do that.

1:43:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, you implemented it on yours, yeah yeah, this is for free.

1:43:11 - Leo Laporte
on WhatsApp the IA Vision, openai's ChatGP 204.5 Orion. This is the one with emotional intelligence. I think we lost richard. He'll come back in a minute. I'm sure there he is there. He is a little blip on the. Uh, I'm back on the internet. Uh, this is the one with emotional intelligence. Not as smart though, right, isn't it always that way in life?

1:43:33 - Richard Campbell
appreciate the quotes around it at least emotional intelligence.

1:43:38 - Leo Laporte
Uh, sonnet 3, 7 from, uh anthropic, the hybrid reasoning model, because it can both fire off quick answers and really think things through isn't this kind of like phones they're?

1:43:49 - Jeff Jarvis
they're not that different from each other.

1:43:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah I, you know, um, I think, people who use it a lot I I was asking Darren Oki this because Darren uses AI to automate a lot of his sysadmin stuff. He has it write ZShell and Python and stuff. And so I asked him well, what model are you using? He said well, right now. What did he say? I think he said what is it you're using, darren right now? I think he said the new Gemini. What? What is it you're using, darren right now? I think he said, uh, the new gemini. But of course, for a long time, code was best with sonnet. Um, yeah, 3.7.

1:44:24 - Richard Campbell
Well, microsoft folks have been asking what they're using.

1:44:26 - Leo Laporte
It's been sonnet 3.7 yeah, he says gemini, the new gemini. Um, also new grok 3, of course, from xai, the one that he bought a hundred thousand H100 NVIDIA cards and he's going to buy another 100,000. It's 50 bucks because you have to buy an X premium account. I have one. I have not found Grok to be that good. After one study found Grok 2 to be left-leaning. Elon pledged to shift it more neutral, neutral, neutral. All I know is I see people generating some pretty nasty memes with Elon and the president, so I don't know how neutral it is. O3 Mini, the reasoning model for STEM Deep Research. Another one of these, uh, you know, thinking models mistrals, le chat, which is very confusing because mistrals friends and it should be le chat, but then that would be the cat and so it's the chat. Um, tests from Le.

Monde impressive, although it smells of elderberries. Open ai operator is meant to be a personal intern. Has anybody tried that you have to pay 200 bucks a month for? It yeah, yeah I really want to have something like that. As you know, that's why I wear this b all the time. A washington post reviewer tried it says. Operator decided on its own to order a dozen eggs for 31 bucks and paid with his credit. Come with the reviewer's credit card.

1:46:10 - Speaker 5
Thanks, operator hey, you're paying 200 bucks a month for me.

1:46:14 - Benito Gonzalez
You can afford a 31 box of eggs. Hey, that's a pretty good test actually. When would you allow ai to have your cut to buy something?

1:46:24 - Jeff Jarvis
well, I'm old enough to remember when people said no, nobody's ever going to buy anything on the internet, especially not expensive things.

1:46:29 - Benito Gonzalez
No, no are you ever going to authorize an ai to buy stuff for you? Spend your money, yeah I think this is jeffrey fowler.

1:46:37 - Leo Laporte
This is from last month I I missed this story. He, uh, he said he asked it to find cheap eggs in his neighborhood and under 10 minutes operator bought a dozen eggs and paid a human to deliver it to my house.

1:46:51 - Jeff Jarvis
All on its own, hey ask the ai for the tip. Uh, it's not up to me.

1:46:57 - Leo Laporte
This is the pay-per-click scenario, right? Because it said find cheap eggs. He said find cheap eggs and the AI said yes, and I will buy them and deliver them to you because you told me to. Would you like some paperclips with that? Yeah, make some cheap paperclips. Yeah, $31.43. He says I was a little frazzled when I realized what had happened.

1:47:25 - Jeff Jarvis
A bad ai decision had cost me real money. I want to be there when he hands in the expense account.

1:47:28 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, it's research.

1:47:30 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, jeff bezos can afford remember the whole reason amazon made the voice devices was so people would order with their voice. And they didn't do that either.

1:47:37 - Leo Laporte
I did it all the time I did it, I'd be shaving and I say, hey, uh, a word, buy me some shaving cream. I'm out and say what's your pin number and I'd tell it and I'd get shaving cream the next day. It's a great thing incidentally jeff, you'll be proud of me. Look at my washington post page. My Washington Post page. It says hey, your access ends on December 28th 2025. You want to resubscribe?

1:48:03 - Richard Campbell
no, thank you yeah, you know what mine looks?

1:48:05 - Leo Laporte
exactly the same Leo that's because you're in Canada yeah, no, I canceled my subscription too.

1:48:12 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, I couldn't until the end of the year. I was so angry. Yeah, but I had bought it with time I'm subscribing I spent I? I went and spent it on the information instead, which is more, very good.

1:48:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, you had well that that got you what two days worth four hundred dollars a year for, uh, the information I can't remember my subscription price a little bit you know, what it's worth it amazon's got to save the money because they're going to buy it doesn't seem like a good time to be reading news from america anyway all right, let's talk about tiktok.

1:48:42 - Leo Laporte
I won't go through all of the other ai models. We did all the ones for this models are boring. I think it's fun to learn what's new and different and exciting in the world it's like the the new, uh le saber it.

1:48:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, it has heated seats, it's got fins yeah, you know, chrome on the front.

1:48:59 - Leo Laporte
Imagine that. Uh, tiktok, yes, the, the deadline is sneaking up any day. Now, I can't remember what is the deadline. You remember it's deadline, days off, something like that? Uh, that's remember what? Previously on the tiktok saga uh, the united states congress passed a law banning tiktok, saying they had to be sold by january 19th 2025 or shut down operations. United states, uh, as that date approached, apple and google both removed tiktok from their store, but then the issued a I don't know what you call it a memorandum, a note, an executive order saying eh not so fast.

A fiat, a decree, a papal what do they call that when the Pope does it? A papal something.

1:49:56 - Jeff Jarvis
It's not a nuncio, that's something else.

1:50:02 - Benito Gonzalez
Decree no, come on. No, come on, you can help me, you know a papal, it's a papal bull, a bull, thank you.

1:50:05 - Leo Laporte
I like that word, I love that. It is nice. Yeah, a papal bull from the president. Martin luther byrne was the one to him saying oh, you got 75 days, we'll figure it out. Apple and google said you sure, really, because the fines are big, and uh, and then, weirdly, they got a note from pam bondi who said go ahead. So they put it back in the store, which is weird, but pam bondi is the attorney general, but anyway, uh, the deadline now approaches, the president put the vice president in charge which even as I say it sounds funny of finding a buyer. So you mentioned and I think this is interesting that there are a number of people popped up, including Oracle, amazon, anthropic I'm sorry, not Anthropic Perplexity, perplexity, thank you. And you asked whoever heard of this app.

1:51:06 - Jeff Jarvis
There's one more. There's one more, Leo. Oh, who else? Andreessen Horowitz.

1:51:15 - Leo Laporte
Now, and then we didn't even mention the bid from the guy. Who's got? I got 20 billion dollars right here. I'm willing to write you a check today. Um is the guy who owned the la dodgers. Anyway. Who's what? Huh, frank mccourt. Thank you, yeah, who's the? Inside track frank mccourt trump is.

1:51:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Who knows trump? There's already, is one we don't know, trump's meeting with them now today, which is a day.

1:51:45 - Leo Laporte
Okay. Was it this weekend?

I thought it was today I don't know so, um, amazon has the money last minute offer. According to three people familiar with the talks this is from the new york times Times the deadline is Saturday. That's why they have to resolve this. But who knows whether, whether China's gonna sell well, and who knows whether anything's gonna happen Sunday? Yeah, the bid came from an offer author via an offer letter addressed to, uh, jd Vance from Howard Lutnik, the Commerce. Oh, and, howard lutnik, I thought they were, car it was on. Uh, you might have seen it on signal, I don't know the commerce secretary. Um, amazon's bid highlights the 11th hour maneuvering in washington over tick tock's ownerships. Right, who knows if china's gonna sell, except china doesn't it? China doesn't own tick tock.

1:52:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Jab well, china can say yay or nay they've already said we're not selling the algorithm. Whatever you get, it won't be the algorithm, you just get the users meanwhile, did you see the new uh tick, tock on blue sky mark, backed by mark cuban? What, yes, hold on a second, it's pretty good. Um, it's on blue sky. It's written on the at protocol oh, that's interesting.

1:53:03 - Leo Laporte
No, you know. No, up to now no one has really done much with this so-called federated protocol so this is the first one and cuban backed it.

1:53:11 - Jeff Jarvis
It's called oh hell, where is it?

1:53:24 - Leo Laporte
it skylight, skylight.

1:53:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Thank you, skylight skylight, not to be confused with the many other attempts. But didn't, didn't know, there's nothing many. This one's, this one's, this one is very much like it. Now, whether the algorithm is there or not, I don't know, but oh, well, it's not the algorithm that you need, it's the people it's a bit. It has some stuff here some people are putting up, so is it an app it's?

1:53:45 - Leo Laporte
an app, yep, and you have to use your blue sky sign-in, whatever that is. Oh, I like that, and so it's built on the federated protocol yeah, on at and cuban scuba said if somebody does this, I'll back it.

1:53:55 - Jeff Jarvis
And a young woman said I will.

1:53:57 - Leo Laporte
And he did tori white is the ceo, reid harmeyer, the cto. It's built on the at protocol um. Videos posted on skylight can be seen and engaged with the with by users on blue sky.

1:54:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, that's interesting and there's a to mike mccue, there's going to be other places, these protocols, you're going to be able to get things, which is going to be a big advantage, I think this is you know when?

1:54:24 - Leo Laporte
uh, and we've talked about this blue sky was originally funded, um, by twitter, by jack dorsey, as a kind of a, a side project. Yeah, to create an open, federated version of twitter. Then dorsey left twitter, but the 15 million dollar funding had already happened. Blue sky got launched. It looks, it's very much like twitter. It's kind of like the old twitter experience with some nice features, but it's based on a protocol that could, in theory, just like mastodon, spawn a number of instances that would all be seen by one another. That never happened. What's interesting is, even though that was the premise, what ended up happening with blue sky? Is there been all of these kind of non-twitter like iterations, like this um, there's something called flashes, which is a photo app, kind of an instagram clone. Um, I think that's kind of an Instagram clone. I think that's kind of interesting. It really is. It's not how I thought it would happen.

1:55:22 - Jeff Jarvis
All right, I'm going to download it, skylight huh yeah, just sign in with your blue sky and you're that, you're in.

1:55:29 - Benito Gonzalez
Darren on on uh in discord, makes a good point about how Tik TOK had copyrighted music. They had a deal with all the the record companies and these guys won't have.

1:55:41 - Leo Laporte
That really was when TikTok took off was when they bought Musically, which was a site where people were lip syncing, brought all those people over and then said and by the way, use music. My son uses all sorts of copyrighted music in his TikToks, but you can do that on Instagram too. I notice right.

1:55:58 - Benito Gonzalez
Well they probably broke a deal with the record labels too.

1:56:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, there are so many skylights I can't find is it in a test flight or is it?

available that story? I don't read no stories. Skylight social. It must be a test flight, because I don't. I don't see it on here, so let's see, I'd be. I'd be open to a replacement. I actually have deleted TikTok. Um deep seek all the Chinese apps. I've deleted Instagram because I kept buying stuff in the middle of the night, but I kept blue sky. I thought, well, I'll have one social network and Reddit is kind of a social network. I I find Reddit very valuable. Um, I don't know. I'm looking at the TechCrunch story. The app is in beta on the Google Play.

1:56:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Store If you go to skylightsocial.

1:56:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, so I can go here.

1:56:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Get in loser. We're decentralizing.

1:57:02 - Leo Laporte
Is that what they're saying?

1:57:03 - Jeff Jarvis
That's a direct, the unbannable short form video platform get it.

1:57:11 - Leo Laporte
Does it literally says get in loser? Yeah, I don't know why would you call your perspective customers losers I don't.

1:57:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't get the joke, but fine get in loser.

1:57:22 - Leo Laporte
It must be. You know I'll have to ask taylor lawrence it's got to be.

It's got to be a reference to something yeah, oh, there's a mac version of it I've got the android obviously yeah, well, actually the mac version will be kind of nice hey then I can show people stuff. No, I mean for us for the show. I can I can put it on screen. It looks like uh, it says follow your favorite creators and it has a picture of the beatles. Are the beatles back? Oh, it's, it's just george and ringo. Only in ai. Oh, maybe it's the ai version. All right, well, good, all right. That's um, and this is, this is who's who's put money in on this, mark Cuban.

1:58:10 - Jeff Jarvis
He's turned out to become the yeah, the surprising good guy.

1:58:12 - Leo Laporte
Surprising good guy.

1:58:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Where's the story here?

1:58:18 - Leo Laporte
Leo Laporteme, that's my handle on Blue Sky. Okay, well, I'll sign up for it while you. That's my handle on Blue Sky. Okay. Well, I'll sign up for it, while you, let's do another story, while I'm wasting people's time signing up for this.

1:58:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I picked the last one. Richard, you can pick one.

1:58:37 - Leo Laporte
Richard, do you see the list, the rundown? I know we enlisted you at the last minute.

1:58:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Richard's in the rundown.

1:58:48 - Leo Laporte
All right, copying my password. You at the last minute, richard's in the rundown. Alright, copying my password. Signing in Wrong identifier or password.

1:59:03 - Jeff Jarvis
I used my email address for the identifier password um I used my email address for the identifier.

1:59:15 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so this show is ground to a halt. All right, let me. Let me find another story real quick. Oh wait, here we, here I, finally. I'm in. I'm in man, as the hackers say in the movies. I'm in and there's a picture of joe biden and zelensky. That's not joe biden. No, who is that? Is that? That's somebody else. Norwegian president, prime minister, jonas gar story. Okay, well, this is this is not tiktok.

1:59:46 - Benito Gonzalez
Well, you're going to be another one you have to.

1:59:49 - Leo Laporte
How do I swipe? Oh, there we go. Stitch incoming mark cuban video oh well, wait a minute this is a tiktok, though.

1:59:56 - Jeff Jarvis
See that well, so there's some more copying over, because you can do that, but let's listen to it oh, you want to listen to it? Yeah, remember this mark.

2:00:02 - TikTok
Cuban video so I appreciate everybody reaching out to me to try to come up with a TikTok alternative. I would be open to investing in supporting anybody or somebody who creates a TikTok replacement built on the AT protocol.

2:00:18 - Leo Laporte
If you've been following along, you know that my bestie Reed, and I have been following along Skylight Social. That's awesome.

2:00:23 - Jeff Jarvis
You didn't cut her. Here's the woman doing it. You cut her off. Well, what is she going to say? That's awesome, you didn't you cut her. Here's the woman doing it. You cut her off. Well, what is she going to say? That she's the one doing it she's the one doing it.

2:00:29 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's the. She's the guy, she's the. Oh, never mind, all right, let me, let me. I apologize, I thought she was just some random rando worst scroller there is.

2:00:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh my god, you're terrible at it terrible at it.

2:00:52 - Leo Laporte
So she's not just some rando, she's actually the one who wrote this. Yes, tori, supporting this is tori. Well, I want to follow her. Let me. How do you add people? You click the first on the eight. Well, we already heard you didn't hear her.

2:01:01 - Speaker 9
You cut her off again got a ton of new users onto skylight social today, so I just wanted to hop on and say hello and welcome to skylight. She's at dorbs building this unbannable tiktok for the last two and a half unbannable tiktok excited and grateful that you're here I'm in fun things to know about skylight off the bat.

You can double tap the screen to like. If you hold down on the left or right side of the screen, the video will play in 2x speed and you can put links anywhere. So you can put a link in your bio, you can put a link in the video description or you can even put a link in the comments that way if you want to post let's say a little snippet of a podcast.

You could link to the podcast, right in the description what you're seeing on the app is truly just the beginning. Reid and I are going to continue to build every single day, and we'll continue to update you as well via this page buildwithtoricom.

2:01:49 - Leo Laporte
So drop a comment, say hi, I can't wait to follow, it feels like just a normal person If you're a content creator and you upload a video you can link to that video in the comments too. So that I can check it out. I am rooting for this.

2:02:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Nice job, Tori her. What's her username? Tori t-o-r-i.

2:02:04 - Leo Laporte
I'm searching skyline. Well, it's the very first thing that came up, so I maybe you've followed too many people. Oh, she's got a lot of posts she's been testing for a long time.

2:02:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, yeah, look at all these uh, she incorporated.

2:02:21 - Leo Laporte
It's a public benefit corporation oh god, I uh, please't this beautiful, so buildwithtorycom. That's it, okay, and I'm going to follow her. There's also a link to her Blue Sky, which is nice, so you can also do that, buildwithtorycom on Blue Sky.

2:02:39 - Jeff Jarvis
This is fantastic. It's AT finally federating.

2:02:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, 55,000 users in its first 24 hours that's pretty impressive. I would say, yeah, wow, you've actually brought us a story I care about.

2:02:56 - Jeff Jarvis
Hey hey.

2:03:00 - Leo Laporte
They built it in 10 weeks.

2:03:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it's wonderful.

2:03:09 - Leo Laporte
Sorry you have to be here for this, richard. Yeah, it's hard. We're just like a bickering old couple.

2:03:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Paul was shocked, just shocked this is how you treat each other so I do hope that.

2:03:18 - Leo Laporte
First of all, I hope torres and reed succeed and that skylight becomes the next Tick Tock. Yeah, I, I will tell you right now. Twit will put we'll start putting our videos on this not ticked out, but on this, okay, yeah should we try to get them on the show? Yes, absolutely andreason, yeah, this scares me, it really does. The conehead should not own Tick Tock. I'm just.

I think it's wrong, I would be as bad, as his latest pronouncement is that we should kill universities yeah, yeah, and they never liked it, even though he made his name at the university of illinois champagne um urbana. I mean, that's where he wrote mosaic and made his money.

2:04:15 - Benito Gonzalez
So I know he built himself.

2:04:18 - Leo Laporte
He's all self-made, leo oh yeah, he's all self-made right?

2:04:21 - Benito Gonzalez
no, no, no, university helped him no help, nobody, he didn't drive no one worked on, pulled himself up by his own bootlaces.

2:04:32 - Leo Laporte
Um, so he would be what he. You know what this is musk envy, yes. Mark looks at elon and and how it's worked out for him with x and says, okay, I'm going to take TikTok, but remember that X has become a cesspool of right-wing blather and propaganda and, most importantly, disinformation and misinformation.

2:04:58 - Jeff Jarvis
And Andreessen's jealous of that too. The funny thing is, andreessen blocked almost everybody on Earth. I was blocked ages ago. I don't know what I did, everybody was blocked by Andreessen. He blocked everybody on earth. I was blocked ages ago. I don't know what I did. Everybody was blocked by Andreessen. He blocked, blocked, blocked. Then suddenly, of course, musk killed the blocking feature and said everybody can read Andreessen, like who cares?

2:05:16 - Leo Laporte
Who cares? I don't care. You can't block Elon. That's the real problem. So today the president is holding a meeting with with AIDS about possible investors who could buy a stake. So this is from the AP. Details of the meeting were confirmed by a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Journal Liberations, but didn't tell us much at all except that there is a meeting going on among possible investors oracle and the investment firm blackstone. Gotta add andreessen horowitz. Gotta add frank mccork. Gotta add a app, annie. What was it? App what?

2:05:55 - Jeff Jarvis
was the one. It's not that's the press the pretzel place pretzel and he's.

2:06:02 - Leo Laporte
If pretzel, annie's bought tick tock, yay, I might change my tune. Yeah, amazon, do you see the amazon? This is very bizarre, amazon. Well, actually, before we get to that, let's take a little break. You're watching intelligent machines, jeff jarvis and, very kindly, uh, richard campbell, who's wondering what the hell he's agreed to a host of windows weekly run as radio. Who's joining us this week filling in for paris martin, who will be back next week? It's nice to have you, richard. Do you have a cat or anybody anything in the hotel room with you that you'd like to? No?

2:06:40 - Richard Campbell
not a.

2:06:41 - Leo Laporte
Thing not even a bottle of whiskey cat gizmo thing. Not even a bottle of whiskey cat gizmo. Uh, amazon. Okay, on with the show.

Amazon is planning to release 14 movies a year into theaters theaters yeah, what do they fix? It's hollywood. And then wait 45 days before it goes on to streaming. Everything old is new again. This is a. This is unaccountable. Yeah, they're going to spend billions of dollars, um, for producing these movies. Right, movies are very expensive these days. They've got a stream of a-list stars ryan gosling, ben affleck, chris hemsworth because all of these guys will go anywhere. There's money, anybody will write a check. Mgm studios they bought, remember. So it's going to be Amazon MGM releasing 14 big, broad commercial films a year to theaters nationwide and then much later they'll release it. And you know that this is is. I'm thinking about this now. This is an appeal towood, to, to directors and movie stars who hate it that their movies go direct to streaming their egos and the academy awards you think that's what the cause of this is, though yes, this is how you get the big names to sign up.

Uh, and you still get them for streaming. You just get it later. Yeah, on prime video. Well, you always get it for streaming eventually. Yeah, yeah, I don't. Yeah On Prime.

2:08:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Video. Well, you always get it for streaming eventually. Yeah, yeah.

2:08:08 - Richard Campbell
I don't know if the movie theaters are going to go for short runs.

2:08:13 - Leo Laporte
For years the companies released this is the New York Times again five to eight films theatrically, but it was never clear how long they'd stay in theaters before going to Prime Video. Air starring Ben Affleck and Mac Damon, received a prime video. Air starring ben affleck and mac damon received a 37-day exclusive theatrical release. Red one with duane johnson and chris evans hit prime just weeks after it debuted. Now amazon is committing to 45 days in the theater before hitting pay-per-view first and then prime. There's there's a financial stake, because box office is often tied to compensation for the directors and stars. There's an ego thing, because you know you get your name on a big marquee outside of a theater. Uh, there's also the academy awards which prefer theatrical releases the question

2:09:01 - Jeff Jarvis
is six weeks enough to make any money right well, the thing is, richard, I wonder for most movies.

2:09:07 - Leo Laporte
I think they don't last that long now yeah, that's really the fact that the the weekend uh takes drop dramatically pretty quickly, faster so you're talking about six weekends dvds.

2:09:18 - Benito Gonzalez
That's it. Dvds sales are gone there's no, there's no dvds what's that?

2:09:23 - Jeff Jarvis
what's a dvd, uncle, but you know, I think I've heard of it it's like a vhs tape, only different oh, okay, is that sony, or is that uh?

2:09:35 - Benito Gonzalez
but, that is really interesting the main source of revenue actually for most studios is, oh yeah, after the theatrical release was selling and global sales, global dvd sales and global release ain't it amazing how things change well and you know.

2:09:52 - Jeff Jarvis
The real question is will there be any movie theaters?

2:09:53 - Leo Laporte
for Amazon to release these movies into. Yeah uh, theater owners say they hope Amazon will fix one of the major problems plaguing their business scarcity of wide release movies. Have you looked? I just walked by our local theater and looked at all the posters. They're all horror movies. Yeah, scary sci-fi. I guess they probably reflect the kind of the national you know.

2:10:15 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it's also. It's the same thing that's happening to TV. It's post-masked.

2:10:19 - Leo Laporte
Right.

2:10:20 - Jeff Jarvis
You're not going to get, you know, a real blockbuster anymore, and so TV's broadcast TV has been crap for a long time. Streaming is going crap and movie theaters are crap well, we shall watch to see how the last movie each of you saw in the theater.

2:10:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, is it? Was it? Um? Yeah, and that was because I wanted to see it in imax abenheimer yeah, and that was because I wanted to see it in imax. Yeah, I haven't seen one in five years. I'm very happy to watch them at home. More and more people have broadband big screen tv, surround sound systems.

2:10:57 - Richard Campbell
I have theatrical seating yeah, there's some films you want to see on imax, or you see it in your home theater, or I watch it on an airplane. Like there's some airplanes?

2:11:08 - Leo Laporte
fine, I'll wait for airplane you fly enough that you need to save some for the airplane. Absolutely. I the brutalist was a good example. I I really wanted to see this film, but there was no way I was going to go see a three hour 20 minute movie in a theater. I'm not going to sit in a theater for three and there was a required 15 minute intermission. I'm not gonna sit in a theater for three and there was a required 15-minute intermission. I mean, it was, it was. It sounded like hell. Very comfortably watched it and over two nights.

2:11:37 - Benito Gonzalez
In my home and I loved. It was a great movie. We've lost the 90 minute broad comedy and that's the best theatrical experience you know, Like watching Austin Powers in the theater with other other people laughing. Exactly, you know.

2:11:47 - Leo Laporte
Paul was talking about this earlier on Windows Weekly about Spaceballs. Oh God, yes. Was it you who saw it in the theater? No, it was Paul who saw it, right. Yeah, and just everybody. It's a communal experience.

2:11:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, here's the question Now that you have the big cushy seats and the delivery of food and all, there's fewer people there.

2:12:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, cushy seats and the and the delivery of food and all. Yeah, there's definitely people there. Yeah, it's different. Plus the teenagers they have.

2:12:15 - Richard Campbell
Kids these days have no social graces they talk, they throw popcorn, they laugh at my clothes. I don't like it. And then, and to anthony's point, like there's, there are new rom-coms, right, like anyone but you, sydney sweeney, like that's it. But they're all on stream, they all go straight to streaming. Well, that one I thought when I saw on an airplane, but yeah, okay, straight to airplane.

I fear for the multiplex with 12 theaters because they end up running four movies, three each in a theater, so you can watch one every hour yeah so actually my screen at home is bigger than the smallest screen at the multiplex. But I think you know what's, you know what's interesting about this. Amazon is at least trying something, yeah good for them.

2:12:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you love, I love movies. I think movies are the one of the greatest creative creations of humanity.

2:13:03 - Richard Campbell
But I tell you many of the like the mandalorian and ro and and uh and or like the mini series is back in that format that there are stories that take 12 hours to tell and you need and you need to binge them over several days do you think those are better than the movies? Um, I think the mandalorian, with the new equipment that favro developed, really changed the game where the volume eb price they're able to do those great special effects yeah uh, and there's certainly stories that you can't tell in two hours yeah, and that's the thing is like give us a worthy story, right but tv went whack with.

2:13:47 - Jeff Jarvis
I was, I was the tv critic at people during the mondo miniseries period, yeah, and they were stretched. The worst, the worst torture I ever endured was ad 14 hours, oh my, and I had. I had an ethical view that I would not fast forward of, of course.

2:14:06 - Richard Campbell
You're literally a professional. How can you right what was Richard Chamberlain? We just lost him, but he did one of the original miniseries. Was it Shogun?

2:14:15 - Leo Laporte
It was Thorn Birds first and then Shogun. He was in both, but those were big stories Thorn Birds was huge.

2:14:23 - Jeff Jarvis
The Holocaust was amazing.

2:14:27 - Richard Campbell
Roots was probably the most watched tv show of all time until recently, band of brothers great show but you know, compare that to saving private ryan, which they're basically derivative of each other. Band of brothers, I mean we say right around one awards. For a reason it's still spielberg, but band of brothers told a deeper story.

2:14:46 - Leo Laporte
A deeper. That was the difference. You have the time to take your time and tell the deeper story.

2:14:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Characters yep yeah, um I.

2:14:54 - Speaker 5
I've become a fan of the miniseries altogether they're different mediums.

2:14:58 - Leo Laporte
They really are a different story to tell the.

Thing I've said all along and I nobody ever pays attention to this, and I hope that this gets memorialized somewhere so that people can look back and say leo was right. Is that really the first vr? And the best vr to this day remains a movie theater, a darkened theater screen that fills your vision, music that is big and fills the room and invokes emotions, and if you're watching a great movie, you forget that you are in a theater. You are in the film that is real vr.

Sticky floors man, that's the best part well, and the kids move so fast on the stairs I'm afraid they're gonna bowl me over every time that's the original virtual experience I missed it is, isn't it? It's vr, and it's much better, vr, than putting a thing on your face, and it's so much better, it's real I missed popcorn badly.

2:15:57 - Jeff Jarvis
I haven't done it in. So I went to the theater and I said can I just take a small and take it out? Eight dollars yeah8.

2:16:05 - Leo Laporte
They charge for the popcorn $8. I just put popcorn in my purse and I have some Smarties in my pocket and I'm set. I don't buy the theater popcorn.

2:16:16 - Benito Gonzalez
But I mean, that is another thing. Like a family, take a family out to the movies, it's like $100. It's expensive yeah.

2:16:21 - Leo Laporte
I know Lisa yells at me because I look, you know, nowadays when you want to watch a recent film on iTunes or whatever your streaming platform is, it's like $20, $30 to buy it. And I go oh, I can't buy. Lisa goes it would cost us twice as much to go see it in the theater. What are you crazy? Just buy the damn movie. Pop some popcorn.

2:16:43 - Richard Campbell
Popcorn's much better at home I make is excellent popcorn, but you don't get the warm milk duds in the uh in the home, the warm milk that's bounced off your head from the guy five rows behind you know that one. Okay, that's excellent.

2:16:59 - Jeff Jarvis
You teenagers so in 1948, the critic irving howe said that mass culture must provide amusement without insight and pleasure without disturbance, as distinct from art which gives pleasure through disturbance. In 1948, he called the movie theater quote a dark cavern, a neutral womb. That is one of the few places that provides a poor man with a kind of retreat. Here, at last, he does not have to acknowledge his irritating self good lord, that's beautiful and air condition critics.

2:17:35 - Richard Campbell
Purple pros, yeah 1948.

2:17:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, they probably didn't ever understand them.

2:17:39 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, the theater would, but they, you know home wouldn't. They went to the movie signs come in.

2:17:44 - Leo Laporte
It's cold inside. Yeah, yeah, because they had, otherwise the projectors burned out if you miss the scooter exchange log, and I know many of you do stay tuned have you been hearing it?

people, people been calling no, not, not one but if you do and I know there's somebody out there who does, somebody just said I'm unsubscribing, this has become a curmudgeon fest. Well, we'll return with curmudgeon fest, more of curmudgeon fest, in just a moment. You're watching intelligent machines with a couple of intelligent guys mr richard campbell from runners radio and, of course, our very own windows, weekly, and professor jeff jarvis from uh, jeff jarviscom great to have you both from these, by the way, was from the goodberg parenthesis.

2:18:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Just want to throw that in say that again.

2:18:35 - Leo Laporte
What was the quote? I just read the 40s parenthesis. Yes, nice, so you bring up these classic.

2:18:40 - Jeff Jarvis
I find these things gems, anything to sell the book out now in paperback.

2:18:47 - Leo Laporte
But go ahead, yes affordably priced, less than a dozen eggs home delivered even from the scooter exchange law. Get ready coachella 2025 live only on youtube. It's coming. Uh, not so long from now, nine days away. Six, count them six concurrent live streamed stages on youtube, and how much are they charging for that?

plus a vertical live stream. Um, how to watch? You got to go to the official coachella youtube channel. Do they charge for that? I don't think so, if, of course, you get a lot of ads, if you don't pay for youtube premium. Uh sponsored by colgate optic, white, jimmy johns and nyx professional makeup in the us plus spark now and NYX Professional Makeup in Canada, makeup in canada.

So I guess I guess you don't really have to pay for it because they have. Uh, I shouldn't knock it if I would. I wish we had colgate. I would gladly do an ad for colgate optic white ding do you guys go to coachella? Would you go to coachella, you don't have to after. Burning man, I'm too tired, I know it's so exhausting all that dancing around naked. Um, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, youtube is uh, really kind of hip with the Youngs. I think they're trying.

2:20:38 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, because they all the Youngs went to TikTok oh well.

2:20:44 - Leo Laporte
Okay, get ready for this, because not only are there these six vertical streams, there will be a I mean horizontal streams. There will be a vertical live stream for those of you watching on your phone.

2:20:57 - Benito Gonzalez
Perfect this is actually for the olds, because the youngs are there. The youngs are actually at the event this is for the olds who know like one or two artists who want to see them you know right, is elvis gonna be playing coachella this year.

2:21:15 - Leo Laporte
Amazon's nova pro try it for free. Built on amazon bedrock. This is, I guess amazon says hey, we, we can do this, we can do ai, we got it, we got it right here. It's got a image generation. Let's see if I can. Um, let's see, uh, draw disaster girl. Let's try it. Let's see if it's as good in the style of who should I do? I'll do disney. Let's see. Let's, let's do an apples to apps. Oh, cannot process that request. It goes against amazon's content yeah, it wouldn't let me.

2:21:57 - Jeff Jarvis
It wouldn't let me draw gutenberg what?

2:22:00 - Leo Laporte
yeah, are they worried about the gutenberg estate?

2:22:04 - Richard Campbell
I guess. So it's been dead 500 years.

2:22:08 - Leo Laporte
What the hell oh, I can't do that. Draw a shirt with a pattern of a variety of dog breeds. Let's see if it matches my fine shirt. Okay, it's just as slow, I have to say as open ai. Oh, that's cute, I would. That's cute, but don't wear it, leo. Well, I like the one I got. By the way, I've ordered some new shirts from the same source, including. I'm excited. I will wear it on the next.

I am elote ears of corn you like my avocado shirt, jeff when you see elote street corn or no, no, just ears of fresh corn. No mayonnaise there was one that was cherry tomatoes and I did not get that one, but I did buy succulents, so you'll be. You'll be glad about that. All right, I think we're running low on stories here. Perplexity, ai, which is my favorite ai, some are saying is disintegrating behind the scenes. I do not feel that is true.

2:23:27 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't feel it's true either. There was one report that they were running short on money, and so then they felt they had to come out and respond to it, so then that makes it a story and when I go to perplexity, the choice of models has changed a little bit.

2:23:42 - Leo Laporte
I used to have a broader variety. Now I have auto pro, deep I'm a paid user, by the way deep research reasoning with r1, reasoning with o3 mini and gemini 2.0. Ai uh xai is gone. It used to be used, grok 2 used to be there. Um, and they favor kind of their own models and that, I think, was what also led to this story, or the story. This from futurism. Perplexity. Ai CEO denies rumors. Our goal isn't to save money and scam you in any way. I Really like Perplexity, the original trash talking post from nothing ever happened, alleged per a campus strategist. They know that perplexity had paused all funding for marketing and partnerships. They also claimed the wannabe google competitor is going public on the stock market, a move they wagered would only happen if perplexity needed a massive cash and checks. I think this is all just it's reddit, it's lies, yeah um, I think perplexity is very good.

You know, I did a. Uh, I've been playing with thanks to uh, darren oki and our discord the idea of, um, local ais. You know, I had an olama installed and I've been trying some of the newer models and I have to say the local ais leave a little bit to be desired. If I ask perplexity, as I did, uh, I said uh, tell me, what do you know about the twit podcast network? It, it pretty much nailed it. Um, let me make this text bigger so, uh, you can see it. I don't know how to do that, maybe I can't. Um, oh, yeah, there it is font. Let's choose a giant font and it's not changing. Okay, I'll have to read this to you. So I tried a few others. Uh, google's gemma, which is that a small one designed for phones, gemma 3, brand new, uh, 27 billion token version. I said, uh, the same question.

Uh, what do you know about the twit podcast Network? It told me some interesting things, for instance, that the tech guy show was hosted by a guy a guy, not me, but by a guy, a listener call-in show hosted by kurt nappenberger. Then I said well, who's kurt nappenberger? It said kurt nappenberger is a prominent figure on the twit podcast network, best known as the host of the tech guy kurt now. So I looked up kurt nappenberger. As far as I can tell, there's only one. He's a 71 year old orthopedic surgeon in Topeka, kansas, and as far as I know, he never hosted the Tech Guy show. It says he's been with the twit network for a very and it emphasizes, very long time, becoming a consistent and reliable presence. He's one of the few original hosts who remains with the network. This is jemma, locally. Uh, then I asked llama 32 do you have any information about the twit podcast network? They said the twit podcast network is a network of podcasts hosted by markie plier Markiplier.

2:27:03 - Richard Campbell
Huh, is that Markiplier the YouTuber? Yes, you know Markiplier, I've seen his videos. Yeah.

2:27:12 - Leo Laporte
It says Markiplier launched the network in 2019. That seems unlikely.

2:27:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Have you even bought? We didn't know it.

2:27:20 - Leo Laporte
Markiplier aims to create a space where creators can come together, share ideas and support each other. The network features a diverse range of podcasts, including comedy, news, interviews and storytelling. Some popular podcasts on the network include the twit podcast with markiplier, comedy goldmine and the rewatchables all shows I wish I were doing. What the hell that's llama so? Uh, it is the case that you can often get hallucinations or mistakes, or just jesus crap from these if you just swap the names out to leo laporte. It wasn't I think that's I think that it's actually true.

The uh, whoever this uh, this other guy is uh, kurt knappenberger. Everything except for the name worked right. He's a long time tech enthusiast, self-described helpful geek. Many listeners describe him as oh come on genuinely kind and approachable person. I think they're talking about kurt knappenberger.

2:28:22 - Benito Gonzalez
Where did it come from, though, like where did the name come from?

2:28:24 - Leo Laporte
well, that's what's weird, because I thought, well, must be a market plier, I understand, because there's a youtube guy. So yeah, but this guy is a orthopedic surgeon in topeka. Anyway, mark, if you're I mean kurt, if you're a listener, I love you, appreciate all you've done for the twit network. It says he's been a reliable presence on twit years, building a loyal following.

2:28:47 - Richard Campbell
I appreciate all his efforts.

2:28:48 - Leo Laporte
I appreciate the efforts. Meanwhile, perplexity gets it right, because I think perplexity is connected. It's not a local model running locally, it's connected to the outside world.

2:28:57 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, something tells me this isn't the right application for local models.

2:29:00 - Leo Laporte
No. No. Nothing current, Although we have been around for 20 years Anyway.

2:29:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Kurt, give me a ring.

2:29:14 - Leo Laporte
I think we need to hire you, or you can buy twin uh, that could be the other thing to do uh, you had darren, had a llama run mistral and asked the same question. He says as mistral. The french le Lachette says as of my latest update, in October 2023, I don't have any specific information about the twit podcasting network. It could be a new or niche entity that hasn't gained widespread recognition yet. Well, someday I hope. Yes, I love all of Kirk Knappenberger's episodes as well. All right, one last break and then we're going to wrap things up One story you might enjoy.

Oh, yes, please, I'm sorry.

2:29:54 - Jeff Jarvis
One more, just one, line 91.

2:29:56 - Leo Laporte
Okay.

2:29:58 - Jeff Jarvis
It's an AI story.

2:30:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's good, because this is intelligent machines A recent conversation.

2:30:03 - Jeff Jarvis
This is a crisp, crisp because this is intelligent machines.

2:30:04 - Leo Laporte
A recent conversation. This is, oh, no accident, crisp ai accent conversion so this is kind of like.

2:30:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So it takes indian and and and filipino. I'm curious what um and makes them sound like they're american yep, so if you go below, there's a demo there you can scroll down.

2:30:26 - Leo Laporte
You'll get the demo because I you know this is true that I often get customer service. I was calling chase bank. They blocked my account. I called once, uh, I got somebody, uh with a hispanic accent. I called and they and they couldn't help me. They said you have to call again in five to ten minutes this issue huh.

So then I called again and I got somebody with an American accent. And then I called a third time, because it didn't work that time either, and I got somebody with an Indian accent. So I think they actually were outsourcing these to all over the world, sure, uh? And? But they were funny because they were all named Chad, which you know. So experience the magic of AI accent conversion. Wow. So let me try. This is the Indian English accent.

2:31:15 - Web
Hello everyone. My name is Ishika and I'm a call center agent from India. Clear communication is vital for my customers and me, but accent barriers can sometimes make it challenging. That's where crisp accent conversion comes in. Let me show you the voice preservation mode in action so now, that's good this mode keeps my original voice intact while softening the challenging parts of my accent. It helps customers understand a better and it makes me sound like a robot. Yeah, it helps customers understand a better.

2:31:45 - Richard Campbell
And it makes me sound like a robot.

2:31:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, improving satisfaction on both sides of the call. All right, here's Filipino.

2:31:55 - Richard Campbell
Hello, my name is Manoj and I'm a call center agent from India. Oh wait a minute.

2:32:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that was another Indian. Here's a Filipino, okay.

2:32:04 - Web
Hello, my name is Hannah and I'm a call center agent from the Philippines. Here's a Filipino, okay, hello, my name is Hannah and I'm a call center agent from the Philippines. Clear communication is vital for my customers and me.

2:32:13 - Leo Laporte
All right, let's hear the translation.

2:32:16 - Web
This mode keeps my original voice intact while softening challenging parts of my accent.

2:32:21 - Leo Laporte
It's interesting, they said softening, because it doesn't eliminate it. No no it doesn't. Which is fine. I mean, I don't mind the accent.

2:32:30 - Richard Campbell
As long as I can understand somebody, I don't have a problem with it, but I I think probably a lot of americans might well they don't. I mean, we're not that far from full voice replacement anyway, so yeah, that we're not going to be talking to humans much soon? Yeah, and yeah, you're right, it could. We can fully bought this. Yeah it. This almost seems like a product made to keep those call centers still running before the software takes over.

2:32:50 - Benito Gonzalez
There you go. That's, that's what I was about to say.

2:32:52 - Richard Campbell
He's exactly right.

2:32:55 - Benito Gonzalez
That's the plan.

2:32:55 - Richard Campbell
Like this is the software in between, software between AI taking over and now you know, they they, they remote data center thing happened because of all that cable fiber that was laid during thecom boom. That all went bankrupt and was bought at 10 cents on the dollar. It was very cheap to have somebody calling them, because anywhere in the wire costs became irrelevant. Yeah, but you know it's really cheap GPUs in your closet.

2:33:22 - Leo Laporte
Do you think uh cat of Boogazala will become a member of congress?

2:33:29 - Jeff Jarvis
she's a youtuber yeah, it's barely a story for us, but she is a youtuber she's running for congress, yep so that's I'm gonna vote for can come from.

2:33:39 - Leo Laporte
She's 26, she lives in the north side of chicago, um, she's challenging an incumbent Democrat, though, because Chicago is pretty blue.

2:33:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Very incumbent.

2:33:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh Been there a long time their representative has been there since she was born. Boogazella was born in 1999 and has not lost an election since. Well, I think we should get more younger. Look at AOC. I think it's good to get more younger people. Mallory McMorrow announced for Senate today. I think she should get more younger. Look at AOC. I think it's good to get more younger people.

2:34:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Mallory McMorrow announced for Senate today.

2:34:09 - Leo Laporte
I think she's amazing Good when the young people you need to take over. Enough curmudgeons.

2:34:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Either that, richard, or you. Please would you let us hide in your basement.

2:34:21 - Richard Campbell
My goodness, I can't tell you how many emails I have. Really friends who say hey, rich yeah, so how hard is it to immigrate actually?

2:34:30 - Leo Laporte
I think all I need is a canadian sponsor.

2:34:32 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, now I've gotten into habit ever uh over every election, of just having the documents handy so I can just cut and paste, because they get a lot of them pretty much just between you and me, jeff.

2:34:42 - Leo Laporte
Even better than Canada. Rich has family in New Zealand, that's true yeah, I've got both passports, oh New.

2:34:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Zealand whoa pretty soon though pretty soon Canada's gonna be part of the EU, so that'll get you into a lot. There you go. Is that what's gonna happen?

2:35:00 - Richard Campbell
there is there is half joking speculation canada is part of nato yeah, so is most of the eu yeah, so is greenland, hint, hint.

2:35:13 - Leo Laporte
Um. Yeah, I'm not sure I want to move to canada. It might be. Might be a dangerous place to live, especially on the border where you are richard.

2:35:21 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, well, no, they got to take a ferry to get to me.

2:35:25 - Leo Laporte
This is all fantasy. This is fantasy land this is pay no attention to the tax cut land. Uh, all right, we're gonna take a little break. And uh, final, unless you guys have a story you want to do, final words coming up. You're watching intelligent machines with the curmudgeonly trio of Richard Campbell, jeff Jarvis and me. Who are you calling?

curmudgeonly Begging you young people to slow down on the stairs. I'm walking here. All right, picks of the week. We like to do this at the end of every show, usually at the end of Windows Weekly. Weekly, mr campbell picks a lovely whiskey. He had a good one this week. Uh, highland park, the highland park, yeah, it looked quite good. A little touch of peat, touch a peat, but uh, and I will let you think if you want to do something, tells us his picks of the week well, um, we could go to the versed cursor is this versed as in liver verse?

2:36:34 - Jeff Jarvis
as in well, I don't think liver verse would work so well, but other verse will work well oh, how to use a sausage for your touchscreen?

2:36:42 - TikTok
yes, everywhere and everyone, as they have a habit of doing in winter, is getting really annoyed about the fact that they can't use their smartphones while they're wearing gloves.

2:36:53 - Richard Campbell
This is a bbc yes segment yes they resort to using something else sausages lots of people that is hysterical.

2:37:05 - Leo Laporte
So she's going to actually use it. It actually works. And this is kind of an old story. We've known this for years but it actually works so she later does

2:37:15 - Benito Gonzalez
a pickle I'm writing with a sausage, wait, but you can't write with a sausage. If you're wearing gloves, though, that won't work oh, that's a good point.

2:37:26 - Leo Laporte
You have to take off your gloves to hold the sausage, and this is where it's got me. How many times have I said that this? Is so popular. But one sausage manufacturer said that they actually had a 40% increase in sales. Oh my God, I'd be punched black and blue.

2:37:41 - Jeff Jarvis
So there's that, and then we could look at the. Okay, that was a good one the fastest and most accurate food drive-thrus. There's a company that checks this regularly.

2:37:52 - Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting, because you wouldn't want to get your order wrong as you're driving away, and I hope it's not Chick-fil-A.

2:37:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, the line length there is the worst.

2:38:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, look at that, this is a Chick-fil-a. That's from longview texas in 2012. Well, come on. Well, that's before. They added ai, which really sped things up yeah, so line links.

2:38:16 - Jeff Jarvis
They have the uh most likely to get your orders right.

2:38:20 - Leo Laporte
Chick-fil-a is right up there, kfc's at the bottom this is, but look at the total minutes to get food. Chick-fil-a's hovering around seven minutes to get your food.

2:38:30 - Jeff Jarvis
That's completely unacceptable of course unacceptable.

2:38:33 - Leo Laporte
Mcdonald's taco bell your favorite. Only five minutes to get the food. If you're hungry and in a hurry, I think the choice is clear.

2:38:41 - Jeff Jarvis
It's very clear now line length black bean burrito is a wonderful thing, folks.

2:38:46 - Leo Laporte
It's a new okay, so the line length is best at kfc, which is now closed in petaluma, so I won't be going there accuracy is lowest.

2:38:57 - Richard Campbell
I guess this might be a correlation oh yeah, we screw up my order the longer the line, the more accurate food, yeah, order.

2:39:08 - Leo Laporte
Oh, the longer the line, the more accurate food. Yeah, huh, yeah, kfc has the least accurate duncan, then wendy's, then taco bell, arby's, mcdonald's, burger king I would have thought mcdonald's would be better than burger king. I thought they had quality control. And the southwest is america's drive through heartland. Nobody wants to get out of the air conditioning. Yeah, that's because of heat. Notice, arizona is the top tap state for that. Interesting. All right, you remember the? I have a pick. We'll give Richard a little more time to to think. Do you remember we? I showed a website that was called radio garden? Um, that was uh. The idea was it was gonna uh, you could click anywhere in the map and you would see um or listen to a radio station yes, from that area.

2:40:01 - Benito Gonzalez
I listen to radio stations in the philippines through that. Still, it's awesome, isn't it?

2:40:04 - Leo Laporte
yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hold on to your hat, benito, here's tv garden. You select a country and you can watch tv from that country.

2:40:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So illegal, I'm sure oh, I don't know.

2:40:18 - Leo Laporte
Here's some russian television. This is from moscow. This is what the you see. This is what people are watching in Moscow. Let's see, there's quite a few stations. Here's DAG music. Do you think this is illegal? Oh, yeah, has to be. Oh, here's cooking Kulinar TV. There you go. It sounds like Spanish, though it doesn't sound like. Oh, here's cooking Kulinar TV. There you go. It sounds like Spanish, though it doesn't sound like Russian. Oh, I guess it's Russian.

2:40:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Portuguese sounds like Russian to me.

2:40:57 - Benito Gonzalez
I'm sure there are paid services to have access to this stuff.

2:40:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but I think there's a lot of public streaming also Switzerland. So let's A to Z. You know that channel in the Philippines, I don't actually. Let's see what they're streaming. Well, that's like a kid's channel, right.

2:41:15 - Jeff Jarvis
What time is it there now?

2:41:16 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, it's early in the morning over there, so, yeah, yeah, so here you go Philippines news. Morning. I don't know, justin.

2:41:30 - Leo Laporte
Well, that as a.

2:41:31 - Keach Hagey
Washington, the States.

2:41:32 - Leo Laporte
America talking about us. Yeah well, I recognize Washington States, america, so I don't know. I think I want, but, nino, I wanted to give us. I am. Now I have to say, when I go to the United States I get a lot of yeah it yeah, weird stuff, I don't. I'm like here's. It says please wait for commercial break to end. That's something our, our audience, sees quite a bit. 24-hour free movies oh, there's a movie I want to see realms at war and together they have been slaying the titans.

This is the worst, the worst movie I've ever seen holy cow. Um, anyway, I just thought I'd pass this along if you're bored. It's late at night, you got nothing to watch. You got 230 countries all around the world. Here's antarctica tv oh, no channels no channels? No, how about greenland? What do they got? We can watch a couple of couple of stations in greenland they're off the air they're off the air because nothing, nothing's happening nothing's happening.

It's great it's. It's the same same picture on both. So there you go. It's limited, it's funded in whole or part by the greenlandic government, I think. So I suspect that's what a lot of these are. Yeah, they're mostly public channels, yeah, but you know, if you miss, you know you miss your native tongue. Uh, you'd like to hear a little more armenian on your uh computer. I think it's I, as a tv buff and I, jeff, you might be the same I'm fascinated by the graphics packages, the styles, the lighting. Uh, I just think it's really interesting to see what they're doing in other parts of the world. You know, it's kind of kind of fun. I can't travel right now, so at least I can watch armenian eurovision you're gonna get taken down for armenian music wouldn't that be funny if I got like a takedown music, wouldn't that be funny.

2:43:27 - Richard Campbell
If I got like a takedown, I got a copyright strike for armenian music, did you?

2:43:31 - Leo Laporte
no, but that would be something to put on my on my wall resume I like it anyway, that's my pick of the week. What do you got, mr uh, richard campbell, anything for us? Oh, he's, he's. He's lost his internet. I think we've lost him. We've lost him. Well, that's okay it's kind of the computer knows it's kind of mean to oh, there he is, he's back, yeah yeah, so I just I've been working on a bit for windows.

2:44:03 - Richard Campbell
Weekly, probably for christmas, I read the book, uh, the old-fashioned, talking about sort of the origins of cocktails, oh, with the intent that I would make one on the show would go through the whole thing. So I thought I might give you a little preview, a taste. Well, just because the interesting way. The question is where did the cocktail even come from? Why is this important? And the first time we see the words cocktail it's literally like the beginning of the 1800s, like 1806 is the first time it's in print, so it had already been around before that. We can talk about the etymology, but that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is thinking about what the composition of an alcoholic drink was in the early 1800s, because there was no AB, abv. There was only proof, which was really a rough measure, of is there enough alcohol in this barrel to be considered a spirit? So the real job of a bartender when trying to make you a drink was to try and not poison you that absence can really do a number on you, that's true absolutely so.

To take a grain whiskey what we now call a, you know call a whiskey a grain alcohol, and then it's been sitting in a barrel for some length of time, although aging in barrels wasn't popular at this point, it was just storage in barrels. The, the cocktail maker's job actually, is to balance flavors so that it's not too alcoholic, it's not too bitter or sour, which often those old alcohols were. And so the basic combination is the spirit water to manage the alcohol levels, some kind of a sweetener, typically sugar, although at that time it would be a core sugar or a hard sugar that they'd have to crush up. And then bitters was introduced early in that cycle as well, which was a byproduct of alcohol making anyway.

2:45:55 - Leo Laporte
So did people not drink straight liquor in the olden days? They did.

2:46:00 - Richard Campbell
It just hurt them. It was very could be very strong or very very potent, and so a good butler or a good servant knew to mix it with water and to add sugar to it, and so forth, and the reason an old fashion is called an old fashion it was the old fashioned way of making a drink oh and it was oh my god process that you would take.

You take this hard block of sugar and you'd break it down. You dissolve it because it's not it's not nicely powdered sugar, that's before this. So you take this sort of molasses, the hard sugar, and you put a little water in it and you hammer it with a muddler until it turns to a paste. And when there was bitters, you'd add little bitters to it as well, and that would be a base you'd work from. When there was bitters, you'd add little bitters to it as well, and that would be a base you'd work from. You might make two, three cocktails from that, and then you'd take the spirit you're working with and you'd use your spoon to taste it, see where it was at, and you'd add water and a bit of that combination until you got to something nice. And if you had citrus available to you, you'd use a little of the orange, because it would take away the acrid smell of the whiskey. So it smelled good too so this is so.

2:47:09 - Leo Laporte
This is the invention of the cocktail, basically they said, yeah, and it was.

2:47:12 - Richard Campbell
A way to stabilize the consistency of any alcohol was to combine these basic four ingredients the spirit, the sugar, the water and a bitters of some kind.

2:47:23 - Leo Laporte
Bitters is very old, uh to take, bitters are basically an herb mixture. Right, uh, they're an herbal flavor.

2:47:29 - Richard Campbell
Well, they're almost dregs of barrels that you add other things to right. So they've got alcohol in any way, but they're usually just uh oh, I thought they were purpose-made infusions.

2:47:40 - Leo Laporte
They're not.

2:47:41 - Richard Campbell
They eventually were like that that you know in this, the. There they exist in almost time immemorial, going back to the lambic stills of a thousand ad. You had these bitter solutions right, but pashod starts making his bitters in the 1700s, for pirates, because it was a flavorant for water wow, well, yeah, they couldn't drink their water rum I remember that the british navy didn't serve straight rum.

2:48:08 - Leo Laporte
That would kill the sailors.

2:48:09 - Speaker 5
They would water it and sugar it maybe put a little cinnamon in or something cheaper to transport.

2:48:14 - Richard Campbell
That too, right right. The other thing is that you're not barreling for age and bottles are too expensive. Like commercial bottles don't come along to the 1900s, so everything's stored barrels, which means it's getting worse. The barrels leak, there's things getting into them, the quality alcohol is questionable and it's inconsistent. The job of a bartender or cocktail maker was to make a consistent drink out of an inconsistent product.

2:48:43 - Leo Laporte
I think that's great. Now are you at the end of of the year. You're going to do a little demo.

2:48:47 - Richard Campbell
So I've been, I've read up, I've got like a half a dozen different styles of old-fashioned spanning over you know a century, and so I figured we'd use the two camera shot and I could show you making one and we'd walk through the improvement in the ingredients I got a better idea.

2:49:02 - Leo Laporte
Richard, why don't you come up here join me in the attic for that special, very special?

2:49:11 - Richard Campbell
I like that idea. I'll fly down where it's warm and we'll do it there.

2:49:15 - Leo Laporte
That sounds great. Richard Campbell runasradiocom. He also hosts NET Rocks with Carl Franklin. You'll find both at run as radiocom and of course richard joins us every wednesday morning, at least morning my time and his time for the fabulous windows weekly program. Thank you so much, thank you for sticking around.

2:49:35 - Richard Campbell
Great to hang out with you, man.

2:49:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I had a really good time I adore richard, uh jeff, because, uh, he's an autodidact and there is. There are very few subjects you can't ask autodidact, and there is, there are very few subjects. You can't ask richard.

2:49:52 - Jeff Jarvis
I adore him because he disagrees with you and agrees with me, so, and he thinks ai is bs, not bs.

2:49:55 - Leo Laporte
No, not ai agi yeah, you're gonna be sorry when the machines come g stands for bs.

2:49:59 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, you know what I'll walk. I'll happily walk into the stream of bullets. At that point I don't want to deal with it. Yeah, maybe you don't want to be around.

2:50:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe you don't want to be there. Uh, I'm looking forward to it because I've just, you know, I've been storing up everything that happens, including, by the way, your guys disbelief your skepticism in this little thing.

2:50:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh we were pretty amazed. It was fun no, it's fun.

2:50:25 - Leo Laporte
In fact, it's really important, I think, to do this. Show that we reflect the various points of view about ai, which is why I've chosen the position of accelerationist I sold one to a friend of mine who is uh.

2:50:36 - Jeff Jarvis
When I found out that she is, yes, because she's a um, I'll tell you her name. E pearlman started something called spaceship media, which is a brilliant, uh way to reconsider journalism. And turns out as we were talking last time she's a journaler and she wants to kind of play with the journals Perfect for that I want to do it. I said, oh well, she said, while we're on the, on the call she. She immediately bought it.

2:50:58 - Leo Laporte
It's auto journalism based auto journaling Journalism yeah. Yeah, I want to journalism know that too, when I find journalism, journaling, journalism. What's the difference? I I actually thinking I should really learn the. It has an api, because I would love it to just automatically import it into my day one journal, and then there would have to be no intervention at all. I just, could, you know, have it do my journaling for me but then then does it do it well?

2:51:22 - Jeff Jarvis
do you have the choice of talking about you in first person or third person? Then then does it do it well? Do you have the?

2:51:26 - Leo Laporte
choice of talking about you in first person or third person. Um no, but you know, that's where uh computer code can be so handy, I see I leave you a good day today my friends with this last skylight video, camouflaging myself to turn off my husband's game. Who needs tiktok? I ask you, go ahead, sell it to anybody you want, because this I got skylight. Ladies and gentlemen, I got skylight. It's so funny. Oh no, and thank you for joining us.

We do intelligent machines every wednesday, right right after with us weekly 2 pm pacific, 5 pm eastern, 2100 utc. You can watch us live on all of the eight streams we stream on for the club members. There's club twit discord, but there's also youtube, twitch, tick tock, xcom, facebook linkedin and kick uh. Watch the show live if you wish, but you don't have to. We have on-demand versions on the website. At twittv slash, I am also available um uh. At youtube there's a dedicated channel to the video. That's a good way to share clips if you want to share a little clip with somebody and, of course, after the fact, you can always download a copy using a podcast player best way to get it. And if you would, whatever player, use itunes or pocketcast or overcast or android, whatever. Please leave us a review. Give us a five-star review. Help spread the word about the brand new version that's called intelligent machines.

Jeff jarvis, emeritus professor of journalistic innovation of the craig newmark graduate school of journalism at the city university of new york, author of the gutenberg parenthesis and the web we weave at jeffjarviscom. Such a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Richard Campbell, run his radiocom. You are a champion.

2:53:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Eight hours. You deserve eight hours. Have a great evening. He's the Corey Booker of podcast.

2:53:22 - Leo Laporte
That's exactly right. And to all of you who watch, especially our club, to members, thank you so much for being here. We'll see you next time on intelligent machines. Bye-bye. Great interview. That was good. That was fun, great.

2:53:35 - Jeff Jarvis
I like having these journalists and authors were actually have no things.

2:53:39 - Leo Laporte
I think it's. In some ways it's better, isn't it yeah?

2:53:42 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, yeah, it really is, uh, so um, are we still streaming?

2:53:47 - Richard Campbell
yes, so don't say anything. Probably no, I have a picture of the baby to show, but I'm not allowed to show it on social media.

2:53:52 - Leo Laporte
Oh, good for you don't, but but as soon as we cut the stream, we will.

2:53:56 - Richard Campbell
I would love to see it that's katie just sent it to me because she says it looks like me, so I think that was funny richard just had his first grandchild yay, mazel yeah, thanks, exciting.

2:54:08 - Leo Laporte
We do not have grandchildren yet, right, jeff?

2:54:11 - Jeff Jarvis
no, no, I thought well, leo, we could try we haven't yet.

2:54:17 - Leo Laporte
We haven't spawned any grandchildren. I don't know if we ever will. To be honest, no surprises. I don't know if I ever will.

2:54:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Let's put it that way so I might not be here next week okay, let us know I know you're trying to get out of it. Yeah, I'm trying to get out. I don't want to go, but uh, but just let us know.

2:54:33 - Richard Campbell
And we do have paris back, yep, and who knows, maybe richard will make his return appearance no, we try, I try not to do that to you, but it was really nice to have you, thank you that was really fun, I really got myself and thanks for getting. I loved being you know. The interview was fantastic, yeah wasn't she great?

2:54:50 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, you were great to have on with her because you brought more perspective because of the microsoft, microsoft angle. Definitely, yeah, yeah all right time for dinner.

2:54:58 - Leo Laporte
Bye bye guys take care.

2:55:01 - Richard Campbell
Thanks, richard, did you want this picture leo?

2:55:03 - Leo Laporte
yeah, okay, wait, okay, wait a minute, Thank you everybody. Before you do that, I have to do my goodbyes, and then I will stay on Adios, amigo, hasta la vista baby. Go say goodbye.

2:55:17 - TikTok
Exit Stage left. Bye for now. Thanks everybody. See you next time.

2:55:22 - Leo Laporte
Tomorrow Chris Marquardt, photo time Bye, okay, now stop. Can you stop the streams? Tomorrow Chris Marquardt, photo time Bye, okay, now stop. Can you stop the streams without hanging up?

2:55:30 - Benito Gonzalez
I'm going to stop the stream, but I need to start the recording again.