Intelligent Machines 815 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 back. Paris Martineau is here and coming up. A very special guest we're going to talk about AI in journalism with Nikita Roy. Stay tuned. Intelligent Machines is next. Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWIT.

This is TWIT, where we talk about the latest in ai, machine learning, robotics and even those little intelligent machines you got all around the house that turn on the lights when you go. Hey, lights on. Is that? Does that count as an intelligent machine? Jeff jarvis is back. We missed you. He was not at the salem witch trials, he was in salem, oregon I was, I was being tried, yeah, so so, uh, how did that go? What were you there for?

0:01:06 - Jeff Jarvis
I was testifying against more dumb legislation from the newspaper industry trying to hold up the technology industry.

0:01:13 - Leo Laporte
Did we win in California?

0:01:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I think. So Google negotiated a deal, and the law was never passed. Meta then was not forced to take down news from its platforms, which is good news, and so that was good, and so Oregon they. It's really, really, really stupid legislation where they brought in some people who said that each platform owes the news publishers of Oregon $122 million a year.

0:01:45 - Paris Martineau
I was gonna say I actually had my testimony.

0:01:47 - Jeff Jarvis
I wrote down the testimony.

0:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Uh uh, I thought you'd outlawed those drugs in oregon, but I took, yeah, no yeah, really, by the way, that lush voice you hear in the background, that's paris martineau, tech journalist, extraordinary parisnyc. Is that your web page, parisnyc? It?

0:02:05 - Paris Martineau
is my webpage. It's also my blue sky handle and now it's an email domain, after I figured out how to make that happen.

0:02:13 - Leo Laporte
Nice.

0:02:14 - Paris Martineau
Tips at Parisnyc. Listen, I still don't know what a DKIM is, or whatever.

0:02:21 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you got DKIM and SPF working and all that are.

0:02:24 - Paris Martineau
Those are things that I don't need to know.

0:02:26 - Leo Laporte
They're they're happening out there in cyberspace it's very important to have your d, kim and spf records up to date so they tell me good d mark is the best. Anyway, great to see you, paris. I made something before we introduce our guest. Uh, I did make something for us. Um, cookies, you're gonna mail them to us? Uh, no, I'm well, I could email it to you because it's digital only, but I decided to to jump on the bandwagon of uh, everybody's been making action figures I was waiting for this you knew I would do this did you I don't?

I thought, let's make some action figures of paris. And there we are, the podcaster superheroes, mic headphones and ipod included this is kind of fun to do these this is fun, jeff, you look snatched.

0:03:23 - Paris Martineau
What is that? What?

0:03:24 - Leo Laporte
is it? What does that mean when the kids say snatched.

0:03:26 - Paris Martineau
That would mean.

0:03:30 - Leo Laporte
The body snatchers.

0:03:31 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, no, like unusually attractive, it's giving you a very impressive jawline, is, I guess, what I would say.

0:03:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Meanwhile I look like Jackie Gleason, but we won't.

0:03:41 - Paris Martineau
I was about to say there's some really interesting choices happening here.

0:03:45 - Leo Laporte
I am wearing my avocado shirt. Shirt, though, which?

0:03:47 - Jeff Jarvis
is nice. So, on AI Inside, jason made one for each of us, and then we went to eBay, where you can now have this 3D printed. Oh, you're kidding, it's a whole new business.

0:03:58 - Leo Laporte
I could take this and get it 3D printed. I think so, if you go to eBay.

0:04:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow, you don't get the iPod.

0:04:05 - Paris Martineau
That's a good one iPod not included.

0:04:08 - Leo Laporte
I made one for Lisa. How many forests did we burn down? I know Probably a lot. I'm thinking there should be a new segment on this show called let's Burn Down Some Trees, in which we make stupid things with AI.

Much of the show is is sad to say. Yeah, and I really did on this one, because what I didn't realize is that, hey, it must have had deep research on, so it did a very. When I did the action figure request, it went out and it did a ton of research. Um, let me see if I could find it, uh in which it went out action figure request denied.

0:04:49 - Jeff Jarvis
What was that?

0:04:50 - Leo Laporte
that. Well, I asked it to look like wonder woman, but so I wanted it because of brand. So but look what it did. Look, it said so it did. It went out, it went to pinterest, it went to ebay, it looked at comic books, it got. So I figured, well, I can't waste this. I did it inadvertently, I can't waste this. So brazil is now denuded. I completely this. Is it the end of the rainforest this is so much can you believe how much it generated.

It took like half an hour doing all this and then it didn't give me an image. It just says here's your research, here's what you wanted. So, but I was, I wasn't a fool. I said, okay, thanks, I've always thanked them. Can you please, uh, make a action figure, a plastic action figure, and a bluster pack out of that? And it did. Actually, I didn't, I wasn't that nice. I said where's the image? Damn it, it worked. It worked. All right. Enough, foo-for-all. Enough burning of trees. I think we should introduce our guest. And, jeff, I'm going to have you do the honors, because Nikita Roy is a friend of yours.

0:05:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, we're all in the journalism world. Nikita Roy is brilliant. I've known Nikita for what a couple years now, and has made a real name for herself at Newsroom Robots Lab out of Harvard. We like Harvard, by the way.

0:06:11 - Leo Laporte
We love Harvard.

0:06:12 - Jeff Jarvis
We like Harvard now.

0:06:12 - Leo Laporte
Even as a Yale man, I love Harvard now.

0:06:17 - Jeff Jarvis
And about AI in newsrooms and is really bringing along the stupid in our field to try to make them smarter and highlighting the smart in our field and they do exist, so welcome Nikita.

0:06:28 - Nikita Roy
Welcome, nikita, great to have you Thank you so great to be here with the podcast superheroes.

0:06:34 - Leo Laporte
I'm sorry I didn't have your image or I would have added it to the action pack.

0:06:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Do you have one yet? Did you make one, nikita, of yourself? I?

0:06:41 - Nikita Roy
did. I just did not like the way it made me look.

0:06:44 - Leo Laporte
I'm not publicizing it you see that I swallowed my pride because I literally it added 20 pounds, but maybe that's it. Ai adds 20 pounds, that's the news.

0:06:53 - Paris Martineau
Did you use that selfie? We all took that one I did we met up. I was about to say because it had the shirt you're wearing now.

0:07:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no it was the only one picture I had of the three of us together and, nikita, had you been there which you should have been at our lunch in New York City we would have had you in there too. You are the founder and CEO of Newsroom Robots Lab, which is an AI training and advisory firm for media organizations. This was incubated at Harvard, so newsrooms come to you and say what, how can we integrate AI?

0:07:26 - Nikita Roy
to you and say what? How can we integrate AI? Yeah, a lot of the times, just how do we upskill our newsrooms and journalists on AI, but also building products, and so, as part of that, we've also worked with a lot of the industry associations on implementing AI programs, one of them being CUNY last year launching the AI journalism lab over there. But in addition to all of that, the part that I really love to, as Jeff was saying, highlight the voices that have been doing great work is on the Newsroom Robots podcast and just research all the innovative ways that AI is being integrated in our newsrooms and ask those hard ethical questions of what it means to be building when we are not very sure what the future is looking like.

0:08:12 - Jeff Jarvis
So Jason and I talked to you about six, nine months ago and a lot has happened since. The question I like to ask you is what's the smartest use you've seen lately and you don't have to name names, but what's one of the dumbest uses you've seen lately and you don't have to name names, but what's one of the dumbest uses you've seen lately of ai newsrooms? I can name names.

0:08:32 - Leo Laporte
Bloomberg just got dinged for. I don't know how many mistakes there were in the ai generated articles on bloombergcom. That's what surprises me. I would think that people would say, oh no, you know this is a a shortcut to. People would say, oh no, you know, this is a shortcut to a terrible reputation using AI in the newsroom. You just don't want to write the articles. Maybe that's the answer.

0:08:52 - Nikita Roy
Yeah.

0:08:53 - Leo Laporte
What are some good uses?

0:08:55 - Nikita Roy
I think the uses is where it augments the work of journalists, and the best use cases right now that I'm seeing are on the investigative journalism side being able to process information that humans alone wouldn't be able to do. And still, I think one of my favorite examples is from Norway. Actually, there's a small newsroom called iTrumpso they're about a 25-person newsroom and Roon Uterberg he was actually part of our first AI journalism lab cohort at CUNY last year and he was talking about how they were able to build an AI system that is able to automatically pull in documents regarding, like, municipal city council data and summarize all of these documents for your journalists. And this is all regarding their public housing beat and this is a beat that is very difficult and they only have two reporters doing that. But once they had the system, which was automatically summarizing all of these PDFs, highlighting if there was anything newsworthy, and then reporters were able to run with it, it cut down their time from about two hours every day to just 20 minutes that they were sifting through these documents and finding if there was something newsworthy.

And not just that in their first week of using these tool, they actually had two summer interns who were able to break five front page stories just with that, and that is like unheard of if like in that particular beat because you need these veteran reporters, and so I think that was one of those exciting use cases of like making sense of large amounts of information but now encoding a bit of that journalistic expertise into it. So you were really helping even the younger journalists break stories so that the more veteran, experienced journalists are able to spend a lot more time on deeper investigations okay, now the dumb, give us a number two and you don't have to name names it doesn't have to be a news.

0:10:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Examples, examples of things you shouldn't do with ai in a newsroom I mean I think you've seen a lot of them.

0:11:05 - Leo Laporte
Don't create um articles, even if it's like avatars sports reporting or finance reporting, where it's just kind of a mechanical thing. I mean, that's the justification. Um, uh, I think cnet uses that. No, no reporter wants to write these yeah, oh, I, I mean ai.

0:11:25 - Nikita Roy
Gendered articles are already a thing and it's been happening for over a decade, but don't assign bylines to something.

0:11:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and to an ai avatar.

0:11:34 - Nikita Roy
Yeah that for a person that does not exist, that don't imply that a human made this don't create an ai avatar, a human looking photo, say.

0:11:43 - Jeff Jarvis
that's AI and I think it's okay for it to be, and also don't make those avatars your only example of diversity in your newsroom. Yes, which?

0:11:50 - Leo Laporte
has happened. Oh, that's tacky.

0:11:53 - Nikita Roy
Yeah, yes, it's been done, definitely so those, I think, ai generated articles is something that has already been happening in our industry and we'll see it happen a lot more. But happening in our industry and we'll see it happen a lot more, but it's just. Let's be clear about when AI is being used and how it's being used.

0:12:14 - Leo Laporte
I think it's interesting that your podcast is called Newsroom Robots, because that implies this robots involved.

0:12:25 - Nikita Roy
You know why did you choose the word robots? That's a good question and I think a lot of this stemmed from it's not just AI, but I think we're going to be seeing a lot of more robotics coming into play and this conversation of just where AI and technology will intersect. Sometimes, when I was playing around with Chad GBT and at that time, midjourney and what would a newsroom, futuristic newsroom it was like having all of these mini robots everywhere and that's how it was creating this image. They're cute, right?

0:12:53 - Leo Laporte
they're not oh, I love that yeah but I think it's just.

0:12:56 - Nikita Roy
It's just an example of it's. It's not just AI versus them. I mean it's not humans versus the machines. It's like humans and machines together being part of that future. What does that look like? Um, and so newsroom robots is kind of that name there paris?

0:13:12 - Jeff Jarvis
have you used ai to help summarize documents or scrape them, or?

0:13:17 - Paris Martineau
uh no, but I certainly know it's a abuse case. I think if you're looking at incredibly large volumes of documents, I could see how that would be useful. My main use of AI in my daily workflow or weekly workflow is using kind of WhisperKit transcription tools, but that's mostly because even when I'm working with kind of a large amount of documents, that's typically just in the hundreds. I'm not typically working in the thousands, which I think is sort of volume where AI becomes particularly useful.

0:13:54 - Jeff Jarvis
So, nikita, let me ask you this Matthias Döpfner, the head of Action Springer, said about I think about a year ago, that he said it out loud we're going to replace journalists with AI. We're going to get rid of some journalists with AI. That's what we're going to do. What nervousness do you hear in newsrooms at the rank and file level? Is that real, or do people dismiss that kind of talk?

0:14:18 - Nikita Roy
I think it is difficult for people to completely say that their jobs are going to look the exact same as they do today, and I think that if you look at past technological disruptions, we look completely different from what a print newsroom looked like, and even the digital newsroom evolved quite a lot during social media and AI is just as big as an infrastructure shift, and so I think it's very difficult for people to agree and say that these jobs are going to be the way they are.

The newsrooms are going to look like the way they are. But I think one of the key things that every single newsroom, and especially the big newsrooms like Guardian and everything, are talking about the purpose driven use of AI. So it's not just let's just replace as many jobs as we can and put AI in there. How is AI helping with human judgment and helping the journalistic expertise over there? But I think there is a difference between just an AI writing an article and what a journalist brings to their story, and in a world where there's going to be a lot of AI generated content, that journalistic expertise, that human rigor is always going to be able to stand out.

0:15:31 - Leo Laporte
There is a threat, though, to humans, which is the AI aggregator. One of our people in our discord, dr Du, says he likes particlenews, which is an app uh for the uh the mac, uh and the uh ipad, and the, which takes, which aggregates stories. This is the, this is the website aggregates stories, and then you know, you don't actually visit any of the sites, you just, you just read the stories, the summaries. That's got to be a threat to newsrooms, isn't it?

0:16:02 - Paris Martineau
this is also how you get your news, too, right, leo?

0:16:05 - Leo Laporte
you're always hey, shut up, no I no, I use a old school rss newsreader and then I, and then when. So you'll see. For a while I was trying, uh, perplexities news summaries and you probably saw some links in previous shows there but I found that they were not as good as as using an old-fashioned newsreader and going to the original sites. Plus, honestly, I feel guilty if I were using particle or perplexity to to get news stories. I'm not going to the original sources and there's a lot of work, as as you all know, in generating those stories that that doesn't get rewarded now.

0:16:52 - Nikita Roy
Yeah, exactly, and I think that's why one of the biggest challenge for newsrooms right now is what is our core value if, in a world that machines can just generate facts, summarize events right at scale? The answer is not just for newsrooms to produce more at scale, but figuring out what our value is. And I think this is a moment of first principles thinking like drilling down and saying if we were inventing journalism today, what would we keep and what would we leave behind? And that is something that was done during the print era. That's something when radios came again. It was like a first principles moment. It was not just take articles, put them on the radio, it was creating a new form of how media was being distributed and news was being distributed. And I think it's again a first principles moment that we have to think about. What is the value of journalism in an AI powered information ecosystem? Because our threat is not just other newsrooms or other newsrooms using AI, it's tech companies now being able to summarize and having that direct connection with their audience.

0:17:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, actually in the beginning of radio it was that because newspapers so objected to radio entering into news that they insisted that radio could have only two updates a day, no advertising, and it had to take the news from the newspapers. Wow, um, until enough, newspaper publishers bought radio stations. They said, oh, we don't like those rules anymore. Uh, you get rid of them.

0:18:16 - Leo Laporte
It's actually an interesting point when I worked in radio news, we did what we called rip and read news. You'd subscribe to a few news services ap, upi, reuters you'd have teletypes in the newsroom. That was that sound that they would play in the background now from the 10 10 newsroom. And you they called it rip and read because you'd have a ruler and a big lead, you know graphite pencil. You'd rip the newsprint off, the teletype mark, mark it up a little bit and then read it and it really was no different, I guess, than an AI aggregator taking the news services.

We subscribed to the news services, but there wasn't any journalism going on.

0:18:55 - Jeff Jarvis
You'd buy the newspaper and you'd do the same thing. You'd add one subscription to the newspaper, but it's the same exact thing.

0:19:02 - Leo Laporte
And then a good newsroom. A radio newsroom would have a reporter or two who would do what they called enterprise stories, where they would go out and look for stories. They'd at least go to the city council meeting and report on that, get a soundbite.

0:19:14 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean my first news like real production news role was blogging at New York Mag's tech blog, where I basically just did like six aggregation stories a day New York mags tech blog, where I basically just did like six aggregation stories a day and I think that is an aspect of journalism that is absolutely going to continue to be disrupted by AI if there's no value as human to do that.

I mean, if you're not adding anything of note to the product, then it makes sense that over time companies are going to cut that as an expense.

0:19:46 - Leo Laporte
I like this idea, though, nikita, of going back to rethink from first principles. Well, what is journalism, and what do humans add to this? And so, what is our job now? And I'd love to know what the answers are. I'm sure you've spent some time thinking about that too, jeff. Oh yeah, what is a journalist?

0:20:06 - Nikita Roy
What is the role of journalism'm very curious, nikita and I think this is something we have to quite collectively think of as an industry, because right now all of the questions are how do we bolt ai onto what we are?

right, that's the wrong question, exactly yeah and the question is again like what is journalism in an ai powered information ecosystem? And I think the answers to that might be a bit uncomfortable for our industry to hear, because it would mean slightly where AI is giving, being part of that middle layer with their audience, and what that means if that's a bit of editorial value going away. But for me, journalism at the end of the day really serves again the basics of journalism. You're holding power to account and the next thing is you are helping people make sense of the world around them. That might mean in whatever way possible, so different new formats of how news might be presented to them the article with a picture and text below it. That was the constraints of the digital era. Well, now, in an AI era, well, you can have a chatbot, you can have a conversation with the news.

So are there ways in which news can then be personalized for people?

But the role of journalism is, in my opinion, it's really like data.

We are the people being collecting in this real-time processing of information and data that then gets provided to um, your audience, to make sense of that information in however they want it to be, and one of these these examples is actually in Germany, the Bavarian Broadcasting.

They're a public broadcaster. They have all of their radio like linear radio format. But what they have done now is really having a sort of personalized regional update. They call it. So you can put in just a location or just log into their web app. So you can put in just a location or just log into their web app and it'll pick up your location and you will get segments of the news that is just tailored to your region. They have taken their same public broadcasting, their linear radio, cut that up based on geolocations so that you can just hear information and news that is about your region. That's one form of personalization that's already happening in radio. So I think we'll see a lot more of that. But at the end of the day, journalism is making, helping people make sense of that information around them as well and being able to hold power to account.

0:22:36 - Leo Laporte
Your, your training is as a data scientist. Yes, yes, so I can understand why you'd say you know that the backbone of journalism is data. Uh, that strikes me as the kind of thing ai can handle quite adequately and be used as a tool to handle data, to to, to go through data, to find connections and make connections to surface important things. To me, the journalist spank me if I'm wrong, jeff but to me the journalist is a storyteller and I, because I look at what's happened to. So radio journalism has changed from what I just described to things like serial, the serial podcast, where it's a story. You're taking the data but then you're mixing it or remixing it in a way that it tells a story that's not only compelling but one hopes informative.

0:23:24 - Jeff Jarvis
So I'm difficult in this Surprise. I think that this notion and I write about this in the Gutenberg Parenthesis plug that I think that this notion of storytelling is a power structure, that I'm the storyteller, I get to decide what the story is and who's in it and where it begins and where it ends and who says what, and I think that that's a seductive view of ourselves. And so we think that we are the storytellers. We know how to write. Others people don't know how to write.

I think if you go and I agree very much with Nikita here if you go to first principles, it's information. But it's not just information. It's connecting people to each other. It's finding out that they have information that they want to share with each other. It's helping them take action in their communities, it's having them be heard in ways that they weren't, it's making strangers less strange. It's all kinds of things like that that sometimes a story is a useful tool. I don't deny that. But I think that we limit ourselves far too much when we think that we produce this thing called story, which is a problem, similarly producing a thing called content because I feel like that leads to us not being able to differentiate ourselves from other people, because content creators are also creating a story.

0:24:34 - Nikita Roy
Anybody is able to create a story. Ai is able to create a very convincing story right now if you give them, oh yeah, data points. So, um, so where is the human value add which I? I think in some places? Definitely there are feature articles, articles where I'm reading for a particular journalist's work that I'm very familiar with. You are reading it for their thoughts, the way in which they are putting things together. But fundamentally, when you just strip everything out, what is that new information that gets added into the world? And journalism is providing new context and that new information in real time, which no other industry is able to do at that level.

0:25:15 - Leo Laporte
I guess maybe that's what I mean by story. I mean the way humans understand information, in effect, is taking all the disparate dry data points and painting a picture with it, which I consider that's maybe what I mean when I say tell a story.

0:25:30 - Jeff Jarvis
But the myth of our. We were led to that by the myth of the model that we had before, that we had to tell the entire story in one day, in one article, and that there was an alpha and an omega and a beginning and an end, and it was neat. One great thing about the web is it takes away that neatness and says that it's a continuing, constant flow that changes all the time, and I think that that's what's the deliverable of that story?

0:25:54 - Leo Laporte
What is that going to look like to me as a consumer of news Could be a blog that we have these things.

0:25:59 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it could be discussion, this, it could be lots of things.

0:26:07 - Nikita Roy
Could be a conversation that you're able to have with the news that is completely tailored to your level of understanding of a particular topic.

0:26:11 - Leo Laporte
That's why Dr Du likes this particle news, because he can ask questions of it. But that's AI entirely.

0:26:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it makes it a queryable database, but that's but the thing. I've been to Kida and I've talked about this in the past. I think If you have a place like City Bureau in Chicago has people going out to cover their school board meetings and town meetings, you can bring back all that audio, you can transcribe it. You can then create a queryable database of every school board meeting in Chicago and say how many of them are banning books or what are the issues there. All of that could be done by AI, though. Yes, it can be.

0:26:50 - Nikita Roy
And I think it's good because it's more than a journalist could ever do. So then what does the human add to that? I think it's asking those questions and being able to get that information from people, being able to form that human connection with sources and getting that information. And I'll tell you one example of what we're we're about to roll out at Newsroom Robots. It looks like a chatbot and it's a clone of my voice where you can come and ask Nikita and Nikita's talking back to you about and it's specifically on AI and journalism. But it's trained on all of the Newsroom Robots podcast episodes, data and insights that I've collected and I've written up, and talks that I've done and trainings that I have done. And you have AI Nikita. Now you can come to her whenever you're asking anything about AI journalism.

So what tools can I use for this particular task to help me with investigations? Or how did Der Spiegel in Germany train their journalists? Or how should I get started with training journalists? Now the delivery of news becomes part of an AI's job over there, but the human component was I had to be the person first of all connecting with these people, figuring out who the right people were to talk about AI, get that information, ask them those questions and then bring that out. Those are all a bit abstract, but you can see these are all data points that we've collected of how multiple news organizations are training a, are training their newsrooms on ai, and then the end thing is you can listen to the podcast, but also you can go and have a conversation um with the news in a way this almost feels like it's turning itself on.

0:28:20 - Leo Laporte
you're turning us on our heads now. Now our job is the drones going out there to get the raw material that then the AI is going to generate the news out of. Like we're the part of the factory that you can't automate, so we get to do the sweeping up, we get to generate the raw data. I always thought the journalist was the person who took the raw data and put it in context and in a story so that people can understand the reporting.

Yeah, you do need the reporting, but I hope we'd be more than just the people going out and getting the raw data to give the machine.

0:28:56 - Nikita Roy
I definitely think in different, different beats, depending on what it is but you're talking about, like hard news stories, for example, or also, for for me, the question is just removing ourselves as journalists. What is the best thing for the audience and for an audience member to be able to understand the information around them sometimes is in their own language, in a level at which they are able to understand the news, but on trusted, embedded information, and that's one of those ways in which journalism will be able to provide that information.

0:29:33 - Leo Laporte
But again so we're the referees then, kind of.

0:29:37 - Nikita Roy
I mean, yes, the trusted, embedded information, because that's where I will go to the New York Times or I will go to my local Toronto Star newspaper just to be able to, because I trust their reporting or I trust their data, in this case, to give me the accurate information. So that's just, that's one of those ways. But everything is evolving and I think this is the time to be asking those hard questions and thinking about different possibilities to see what things could look like. One is you're gonna look the same?

0:30:11 - Leo Laporte
John Greenewald Paris. You're a young journalist. You, you know you're getting into the, into the field. You're actually quite successful in the field, but you know you're you're in this generation where you're reinventing what journalism is. What do you? What is your role? What do you want your role to be? I mean, what do you provide? You're a good investigator, right? I think that but you wouldn't want the AI to write your story based on your investigations.

0:30:42 - Paris Martineau
I mean no, but I think that part of what figuring out this new era of journalism is going to be about is taking a hard look at what the value add any particular reporter is bringing to their beat, to their newsroom, to the world at large talking about before, when I started in this field, aggregation was kind of the name of the game, as far as entry-level careers.

Every website wanted to have you know whenever I remember there was like some new Snapchat or Instagram feature out and New York Magazine wanted to have clicks, so we'd write up a little 500 word thing on that and had to be at least 500 words because if it wasn't, then it wouldn't get indexed properly by Google News or whatever. I think that that is. I mean it's not even going away.

0:31:31 - Leo Laporte
I think that's like almost completely gone but as a successful journalist in your field, as a mature journalist in your field, what you bring to the table is your sources, your connections, your ability to get people inside a company for to tell you what's really going on. That's what you that's a machine can't do that.

0:31:49 - Paris Martineau
That plus like analytic ability and story sense.

0:31:54 - Leo Laporte
Knowing what questions to ask.

0:31:55 - Paris Martineau
Knowing what questions to ask If I'm looking through 200 pages of documents. I've said this before on the podcast. Part of the reason why I don't use AI tools when it's at least a lower, more manageable volume like that is because you never know what small detail you're going to come across that could either be really pertinent for the story you're working on then or for stories down the line, and I think that that's something that is going to be extremely difficult to replicate with AI, and I'd like to say impossible, but of course, nothing's impossible.

0:32:27 - Leo Laporte
You're the red string. You're the red string.

0:32:30 - Paris Martineau
I am definitely the red string between the pictures. That's one of my favorite things to do, and I think that that is where journalists human journalists are going to remain. Key is I don't think that you're going to have a world where an AI agent is going to be able to write an investigative piece on the finances of Elon Musk, for instance, and the people in his circle.

0:32:57 - Leo Laporte
But Nikita. It would be a useful tool to dig into the forensic accounting of that piece right. Yeah, I mean certainly, if you like need to look through a bunch of things or want to be able to quickly query something, ai tools are fantastic for that I got mocked on sunday by the twit panel because I talked about, you know, this b thing which you always mock me for too, and one of the things I said I like a little recording device that's going 24 7.

0:33:24 - Paris Martineau
records all of his life, okay. And then it gives me ai summaries and one of the things I said I like about it Nikita, he's got a little recording device that's going 24-7, records all of his life, oh, okay.

0:33:27 - Leo Laporte
And then it gives me AI summaries and one of the things I said I like about it is it does all my journaling. For me, it's basically creating a daily journal I don't have to do anything with. And the person said, yeah, you wouldn't want to get any insight from writing your daily journal or anything you wouldn't want to have a moment of self-reflection at the end of the day.

0:33:48 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no reflection, I just want the copy Keep going, keep going. So, nikita, I'm curious, given the suits against AI companies and given the fear about jobs and given other things. I haven't been in a newsroom enough lately. Is there a hostility to it? Is there a get away from me, devil? You're bringing in my competitor, you're going to ruin us. Does that mood in some quarters of newsrooms?

0:34:16 - Nikita Roy
It definitely is, and I think I'm just coming from the International Journalism Festival in Perugia and I think there was a divide between some people who were just using AI and I think you could see on the panels itself, everybody was like here are all the brilliant and use cases and ways in which we're using AI, and the other side is don't trust any of these AI companies. And I think a lot of what's been happening is equating what happened with social media to AI.

And because it's the same social media companies, those platforms that are now coming and saying here is AI, everyone should be using it, but we've trained it on all of your data and so people are very against it and just sometimes not wanting to use AI. I've gotten a lot of questions recently about how do you feel like using AI, since it's trained on data of journalists and it's unethical? Like how can we push for AI? And the biggest thing I always talk about is AI cannot be. It's not a platform, it's not like social media. It's more and more becoming a utility, like electricity, and it's especially with open source models, and I think that's one of the big things.

That was the deep seek moment was it's showing that open source models are coming to see. That's one of the big things. That was the deep seek moment was it's showing that open source models are coming to see that models are becoming a commodity, and it's something that's going to be everywhere, whether we like it or not, and we have to be able to understand how to use AI and exactly how it's going to disrupt our news business, and so that's definitely a huge divide that's still existing in the industry well said um, yeah, I guess you need to tread carefully because, after all, you don't you don't want people to lose jobs yeah and, um, I think that's a big concern.

0:36:03 - Leo Laporte
Uh, people have. So you need to find a way that the human and the ai can coexist, or is that? Where is that what we're reduced to?

0:36:11 - Nikita Roy
uh, so, go ahead it's again it's again, it's again. The co-existing part might come. The disruption is in that news distribution process right yeah.

We're already seeing that. You're showing Particle. That is a tech company built on top of news journalists' work and now, summarizing that, information aggregation was already an AI part, disrupting the distribution. We'll see a lot more disruptions happening and that's where I think AI is going to be there. But AI is, as Paris was saying, her connections with the industry, her sources, those conversations she has in the hallways, like that's something that AI is not going to be able to pick up and nuances when somebody is speaking that it would be able to pick up on. It's going to disrupt that layer and that connection with our audience for sure. So we have to start thinking about that very actively.

0:37:09 - Jeff Jarvis
We also have to look at what we do, and I've said this before.

0:37:13 - Leo Laporte
We almost had a moral panic. Benito's got his finger hovered A twitchy finger.

0:37:22 - Jeff Jarvis
It's how much money we waste copying each other, and that's the great irony of complaining about AI companies reading and learning from our content. Is that so much, paris, what you had to do in your first job at New York Magazine. Right, I'm going to rewrite others, because we want our own story with our own ad, and if we get rid of that inefficiency in our business and we can find real value, I think that's going to be important.

0:37:49 - Paris Martineau
And I do also wonder I mean, how does this all end? The reason why companies at the time wanted young interns like me, at my first job, to be writing up everybody else's stories is because they wanted views on their site of their ads. And as we get further and further into a news ecosystem where digital advertising matters less and less when it comes to the bottom line, or is less and less valuable, what? What replaces that? How are they going to pay for the ai tools as the prices of these go up and up once these companies need to make money?

0:38:28 - Leo Laporte
You also, though, got experience right. I mean, were they insensitive to the notion that you're learning a trade too right, and we're going to start you at the bottom?

0:38:39 - Paris Martineau
No, I mean, it was a fantastic learning experience. It's something that I had recommended to you know young journalists for years, and now it's kind of foolish to recommend something like that. Those jobs it's I mean they exist, but it's not in the same way, but it was invaluable as a like early career journalist, to cut your teeth by trying to pitch six stories a day and figuring out what works and doesn't and how to write all of them.

0:39:06 - Leo Laporte
Nikita, where do you come down? Fast Company had an article this week the next big AI shift in media turning news into a two-way conversation. Where do you come down on this idea? I feel like that they're taking a page from podcasting where it's. You know, right, if you don't have a man and a woman talking about something with suitable interjections, you don't. You don't have news.

0:39:32 - Nikita Roy
I um, that was actually my prediction for oh, you knew this would happen lab.

Yeah, that's what I wrote back in December of my Neiman Lab prediction was saying that AI turns news into a conversation. Wow, and just after I wrote this article, time Magazine had come out with a conversational AI audio piece with their Time Person of the Year articles, where you can talk back and have a conversation with it, and I definitely am a huge proponent of saying that it's going to be conversational, it's spoken, it's very interactive, and the reason is because I've actually personally been doing that a lot. If you go to ChatGPT, you can go to the voice mode and have a conversation with ChatGPT, which I do all the time. If you go to perplexity which is often my default when something major new story breaks and I want to just get a quick rundown on what's happening, I go and talk to perplexity and I can be like dumb it down for me as a five-year-old and explain what's happening with the tariffs or something like that, because it's having all of that vetted information from across the internet and sometimes you just need to be able to understand what's happening.

It does a really good job and I've been playing around this for over a year now and that's why my first thing in Neiman Lab was like in 2025, we'll not just read the news, we are going to be talking to it and it will talk back to us.

And the biggest reason for that is conversational AI is one of those big breakthroughs that's been happening where you can talk to it and it can talk back to you, and it's really really quick. It's really really fast in the ability to do that and the biggest thing is it helps the audience, because, again, an article is just written in one way and we just assume people are able to understand what's there, and that's a bit misaligned with just the way in which people naturally process and engage with information. Think about, like the last time you learned about something really complex, it was about discussions, it was going back and forth and understanding, not just reading one article. That's what conversational AI will allow us to do and that will benefit our audience. At the end of the day, it's, again, all based on the work that we do, but we are now moving from just one way, listening on podcasts, to going back and forth and having a conversation that we could do you think people want it.

0:42:09 - Leo Laporte
That sounds like a lot of work. I mean, I know you want to do it because you're smart, but to to normal people. I mean, isn't going back to radio why? 10, 10 wins did so well what? What was the slogan, jeff, give us a 10 minutes, we'll give you the world? Yep, we don't have to do any work. Just 10 minutes and you'll know everything that's going on. Bye-bye.

0:42:28 - Nikita Roy
Yeah, but a lot of times people are just like how does this apply to me, or what can I do with this information? And think about people just talking to their Alexas. And right after this article, Alexa had actually Amazon had signed a deal with Reuters to be able to integrate it in their new Alexa and Google Notebook LM had they had their podcast feature AI-generated podcast features and they had introduced, right after this, a way in which you can interrupt the podcast host and ask questions back and forth. Yes.

0:43:01 - Leo Laporte
Right, just what I want.

0:43:05 - Nikita Roy
Don't interrupt me. So I think it's just a way of thinking of what opportunity does this technology present to us? And it's not just using AI to create AI-generated articles or AI audio overviews through like a podcast, like an AI podcast, but it's how do we help people in making sense of the information. A lot of this was actually stemmed also from a conversation that I had with Agnes Stenbaum from Shipstead on the podcast.

Yeah, she's incredible. They do a lot of thinking about the future of news and they brought in Gen Alpha basically into their newsroom, paid them, started telling them to imagine what the future of news could look like. Gen Alpha is an AI native audience, right, and they came up with one of those futures where they had, like, a news companion that could help them make sense of the information and be a sort of compassionate guide when they are overwhelmed with the news, when the news is really overwhelming, and that again got me thinking of what that interaction could look like. And again, Gen Alpha is one of those. They are. Once they turn 18 and become adults and you'll see a huge shift in news consumption patterns that will start to arise because of Gen Alpha, who are already very comfortable with interacting with AI companions and AI bots. I was over optimistic. It took them 22 minutes.

0:44:47 - Leo Laporte
It was 22 minutes but of course there were 18 minutes of ads in that 22 minutes, so I wasn't too far off. Um, that's encouraging if I, if you, really think that the media consuming public wants to do that, wants to dig deeper, wants to understand, to understand. Joshua Rothman in his piece, by the way, he agrees with you. In the New Yorker last week he said really that's the future of news. If AI doesn't kill it, it'll give us a chance to query it and talk about it. And he says I could ask it dumb questions. I'd be afraid to ask anybody else and learn more. If people really did want to learn, obviously that's a great way to do it. We're all back in the classroom, you know, at a university, every time we read a news story. I just I don't know if people I don't know, do people really want that. I hope they do.

0:45:34 - Paris Martineau
We'd be a much more informed electorate yeah, I'm curious as to how the um this impetus to I can understand from at least a journalist and people who work in this area yeah, you're the type that's asking those questions we want to be like, of course

yeah, consumers want to interact with news and reach out, but I feel like, especially in the social media era, the way that most passive consumers come across news is passive. They come across it in their feeds, shared by people in their network, and that's kind of how they interact with journalism. Have you, I guess, noticed at all in your research in this that use of these ai chat tools? Uh, are people more prone to be asking about the news?

0:46:16 - Nikita Roy
I think what we've been seeing has just been all of these chatbot experiences that newsrooms are having, um, and one of those great examples is actually from Afton Planet. They created like an EU election chatbot and when it's something very specific about a particular topic, people were more likely to go and have conversations with it and they had a huge success with that. And I think this is just as we are evolving. Our audience is evolving in their habits and behaviors and the technology is still evolving, and so the whole thing that conversations lead us to do is being able to architect understanding of an information and a topic, and it's not just creating a conversation, a two-way conversation, but how do we now design a news experience with that new technology?

And I think those are those questions that we have to start asking and start evolving and thinking, and I do know of quite a few newsrooms that are currently exploring this particular realm and seeing what can be done. How can it be done? Maybe when you're just saying this is the news and you're going and having a conversation trying to understand how it relates to you, but it's not just going to be a written form, but maybe a more back and forth conversation that you can have, and maybe this is just a premium feature for the more excited, the audience members that are very interested in ai. But it's going to be a habit that we're going to start to see and evolve as ai becomes more like just present around us and this technology is integrated into our lives instead of talking to people, because I find people pretty stupid most of the time.

0:48:00 - Leo Laporte
So this way, I can ask an ai the question that I would otherwise ask the people in my life and have a conversation with them. I feel like we're giving AI a lot more credit. Here I am on this show, I am the AI accelerationist and I'm now arguing against the use of AI in journalism.

0:48:20 - Paris Martineau
So you got me. How have the turned tables?

0:48:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the tables have turned. The tables have turned, the tables have turned. I think it may be a backlash at some point where we say, okay, we've had enough input from you machines.

0:48:33 - Nikita Roy
Now I'd like to know what the humans think a journalist, a particular person's voice and their opinions and thoughts. I will be more inclined to go and seek that rather than getting an ai version that is completely personalized for me.

0:48:54 - Leo Laporte
So there are going to be those opportunities and places where that happens and I don't think it's going to be just like a monolith way of good I do think, though, we're social, and so I do think it's not unusual or uh odd to think that we might want to have conversations with our news sources. I don't know, I that's. Maybe that's why I do these shows, because what I do is I put people like you, and, and Paris and Jeff on and I just sit here and ask questions. Maybe, maybe that is why I do these shows. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, jeff, I mean you, you taught a whole, you're teaching, you're taught and teaching a generation of new journalists. I was very surprised. Joshua rothman said there are only 55 000 journalists in the united states. That's fewer than door dash drivers in new york city I'm frankly surprised there's that many, yeah, yeah.

Well, only half of them are making a living. But uh, it is. It's a small profession. Do you encourage people to get into it?

0:49:53 - Jeff Jarvis
jeff um, yeah, what if I listen? If I didn't, I'd be a fraud uh, right now what? Are you what I tell?

them. What I tell them is that it is up, I point to them and I say it is up to you to change journalism. Uh, I'm too old. Uh, I'm here to help you. Uh and um, listen to what we tell you, uh, and teach you, but question everything we tell you and teach you. Uh, ask why we do this the way we do it. And probably the answer is follow the money cliched, but true and rethink the fund, as nikita said. Rethink the fundamentals of what, where the value of journalism should lie. Uh, rethink our relationship with the public and remake it, rebuild it, redo it, throw out what we've done wrong, and that's what makes it exciting you started as a data scientist.

0:50:40 - Leo Laporte
What drew you to journalism?

0:50:42 - Nikita Roy
well, I, when I was doing my master's in data science at harvard I actually do it was just towards the tail end of COVID I started a newsroom for the Indian diaspora called the NRI Nation, and so that's how I did, because we had an abundance of information. It was for the Indian diaspora, trying to understand that information, making sense of it, and out of that need we started that newsroom and I picked things up along the way in building a newsroom and that's what drew me to it, and journalism was actually part of my beginning in the undergrad, but I decided I was better in the sciences and it had a much more job opportunity at the time, so I stuck with it.

0:51:24 - Leo Laporte
MARK BLYTHINGTON You've combined them both, which is brilliant.

0:51:26 - Nikita Roy
So yeah, I know. So it's been really great in that way, but I think the part about AI and journalism and why I started Newsroom Robots back in 2023 was because all of the conversation that I was seeing at that time was about will AI take away the job of a reporter, and I was like it can't. And, as a data scientist, we were actually already using AI within our newsroom and all of the transcription softwares that were happening. These AI tools ChatGPT, the OpenAI, gpt wasn't new to me and I was like it cannot take over the job of a journalist because what we do is so unique in that value of making sense of information. But AI can help us in a lot of the jobs that are done in a newsroom, and so I wanted to be able to change that conversation and hear actually how people are using AI, and that's how newsroom robots started in a way, so we can have go beyond the panel discussions of will AI take away the job of a journalist.

0:52:26 - Leo Laporte
It's interesting you started as a niche journalist. Yes, because I do think that is one area. Certainly we're a niche podcast right. We speak to a very niche audience and I've made the last 20 years that my business of serving a very specialized audience and I've found it much easier. I used to do general talk. I found it much easier to serve an audience I that was small that I knew well that I could serve better because they weren't a general audience. I wonder if in some degree, that is also the future of news and ai would help a lot, because when you get a niche market, you get a. It's a smaller market, there's less money to go around the mass is dead.

0:53:05 - Jeff Jarvis
It's dead, isn't it?

0:53:06 - Leo Laporte
yeah, that's what you've been saying all along, yeah, yeah.

0:53:10 - Nikita Roy
I and I think so. I mean I am still like the whole AI and media space that I talk and report on. I think one of the biggest reasons why I'm not afraid I can take away that part of my job is because my audience trusts me and you understand that?

yeah, and I have a personal connection with them. I go to all of these conferences, I'm talking to them, they are sharing information with me that they wouldn't be sharing elsewhere, and all of that is because of the trust that I'm able to have and because of the content that we're putting out there. So I think that niche journalism space is definitely something that is going to thrive because of that direct connection that we're able to create with our audience.

0:53:50 - Leo Laporte
And you were smart. You didn't do a Norwegian, you know, diaspora news operation. You focused on something you knew well and understood, and the audience. You could speak to the audience as a peer.

0:54:02 - Nikita Roy
Yes.

0:54:03 - Leo Laporte
And that's smart. Yeah, yeah, um, that's an opportunity. Yeah. What happens, though? Uh, in a, in a, in a nation where there's a thousand niches and no and no national identity. You know, I feel like that's kind of what's happening today in america that's where we came from.

0:54:25 - Jeff Jarvis
oh, he's got the book, ladies and gentlemen the American Newspaper Directory of 1900. 46 daily newspapers in New York City. This is a more natural state of being than the few in the mass. That was a perversion of society and public discourse.

0:54:40 - Leo Laporte
Jeff, I've only worked with you 15 years and it's finally sinking in, so thank you. All this time you've been this time and I just didn't know it.

0:54:50 - Paris Martineau
I finally believe you can get a permit in some states.

0:54:56 - Leo Laporte
We're a common law podcasters, nikita. Thank you, oh, go ahead.

0:55:01 - Nikita Roy
Oh, I want to say about that part because if everyone's creating a niche journalism aspect, you're having this new system of AI agents coming in which are able to then pull information from multiple different sources and give you your own personalized briefing. That is something that tech companies are actively working on. So, if you go to like chat GPT operator, I went to another one called convergence AI yesterday and it was like they already had a pre-written prompt Bring me a story about summarize the financial news story from both the right and left-leaning news website. Include at least one right one left. And it had this prompt over there that if you hit a paywall, go and take the URL of the article. Go to this website, please. You can see the entire.

0:55:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh my god, it told you how to get around the hot that the table.

0:55:50 - Nikita Roy
Oh, it was like telling that and then after that I could just get like a whole personalized news briefing about different stories that it was taking from multiple different websites. And so that's where I again I'm talking about that news as a data, because if AI now is, it becomes mainstream, where AI agents are giving you the information. Niche journalism is required to bring in more of that and there would be maybe a new way in which people would be accessing information, not just through websites.

0:56:21 - Leo Laporte
This convergence AI is new to me. This is really interesting.

0:56:24 - Nikita Roy
But this is an example of yeah, they have over there right left leaning unbiased news coverage yeah yeah yeah, this is an example of something on top of existing models, right, they?

0:56:37 - Leo Laporte
they probably didn't design their own model. They've, they've, they've added a top, something on top of it. Which is what's happening with AI is this explosion of different uses? Wow, now I want to try this. How many subscriptions can I have, ask Lisa. Yeah, no kidding, I have about 10 different $20 a month AI subscriptions, so you like perplexity Nikita subscriptions, so you like perplexity nikita, I do like perplexity.

0:57:09 - Nikita Roy
It is definitely one of my top perplexity chat gpt and claude right now yeah um, and I've been testing out operator quite a bit in this new one called manis ai and it's a lot of attention, it's getting a lot of attention yeah, exactly so I've been just testing, testing these things out to see, um, what an agentic future could look like.

Oh, there was one one thing that I did do with chad gpt operator that did give me like a, um, a bonus version. I was able to go to chad gpt operator. I had a. I had a flight that was delayed from Tampa to Toronto and you get $300 coupon like a voucher if it's delayed, and so I went to charge. The operator, gave it my reference number and name and told it go and figure out how to get the money.

0:58:00 - Leo Laporte
Did it get you the money?

0:58:02 - Nikita Roy
It did everything and at the end I just have to go and approve it. That's actually a great use. That is I know right?

0:58:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Did it get you the?

0:58:07 - Nikita Roy
money. It like did everything and at the end I just have to go and approve it. That's actually a great use. That is, I know, right, and so I'm like that's how.

0:58:12 - Leo Laporte
Chachi can get me $300. Wow, well, maybe that's the key. I just need to get it to pay for itself, that's all.

0:58:19 - Nikita Roy
It does a lot of tasks, so it can really help you do a lot of tasks in that way we live in an interesting world, nikita, thank you for doing the work you're doing, bringing it to journalism yeah and uh.

0:58:31 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, jeff, for connecting us thank you so much. Nikita roy's. A podcast is uh called newsroom robots, the ai in journalism podcast. It's on substack. What is there a direct link?

0:58:47 - Nikita Roy
newsroom robotscom Perfect. It's available on any podcast platform that you listen to.

0:58:52 - Leo Laporte
Nice, very nice. Learn more about how this all works. Thank you, nikita.

0:58:59 - Nikita Roy
Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

0:59:01 - Leo Laporte
Really great to have you. Thank you, and uh, we'll, we'll move on, but I want to say goodbye and come back soon yes, thank you so much thank you, thank you appreciate it. We'll take a little break and come back with uh ai news and beyond. You're watching intelligent machines, the whole gang's back together. It feels like it's been ages since we've had everybody. Yes, it has. Paris martineau is here. Back from europe. Paris, back from paris. Jeff jarvis back from the salem witch trial we all believe that you would float we decided you weighed more than a feather or less than a feather?

0:59:45 - Paris Martineau
listen, it's beyond me.

0:59:46 - Leo Laporte
I can't figure it out.

0:59:49 - Jeff Jarvis
You see, when I took swimming lessons, somewhat against my will, when I was a young man, did I tell you this before? No. So I wasn't very good at it. And then I remember the teacher came out to talk to my mother one time and he said Mrs Jarvis, your son is very buoyant.

1:00:06 - Paris Martineau
Were you like it's all the hot air. It's all the hot air in his head.

1:00:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Getting the thing from the bottom of the pool. Why did you put it there? Bozo and I wouldn't have to get it.

1:00:15 - Leo Laporte
I can't get it. I can't get it. Trick, put your legs above your head. We will have more in just a little bit with our esteemed panel and AI news as well, on intelligent machines, but first a word from our sponsor, appropriately named Spaceship. We're brought to you by Spaceship today.

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Did you see that? Somebody I this isn't really ai, but I have to do it somebody, uh, hacked the cross you know how crossing buttons in. Uh they go. You know, walk sign is on on main street. Walk sign is on or wait wait yeah, well, somebody messed with the menlo park crossing buttons here.

1:03:17 - Web
Let me play one for you wait hi, this is mark zuckerberg, but real ones. Call me the Zuck. You know it's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience, and I just want to assure you you don't need to worry, because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. What's the crosswalk?

1:03:42 - Paris Martineau
I love that.

1:03:44 - Leo Laporte
Isn't that terrifying.

1:03:45 - Paris Martineau
That's great, I love that. Isn't that terrifying? That's great. I love an art project like that. I love a casual hack.

1:03:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I guess it is an art project.

1:03:52 - Leo Laporte
There's a Musk one too, the Musk one's profane. Can I play it? Well, where's Jammer?

1:03:57 - Jeff Jarvis
B. He was in the Discord earlier, if you're out there listening with some kids cover their ears.

1:04:05 - Leo Laporte
Let me see if I can. I can find it here. Um, I don't, I don't. Uh, I read it. I don't think I ever listened to it. Uh, palo alto city spokesperson megan horgan taylor told the san francisco chronicle the voiceover systems at several intersections in palo alto, menlo park and redwood city were tampered with. Tampered with, um, here's, here's the place to do it, here's the fake musk. Oh, I have to you have to turn audio this always gets me on this darn tiktok, it starts up in the left hand yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Wait.

1:04:45 - Web
Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla engineering. You know, they say money can't buy happiness. And yeah, okay, I guess that's true. God knows, I've tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck and that's pretty sick, right, Right, I'm so alone.

1:05:08 - Leo Laporte
We'll bleep out the F word I did. I love a good art project. That's exactly the right reaction.

1:05:16 - Paris Martineau
I love having a silly, a silly little time when I press a button out in the world. I think that's fine.

1:05:22 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure they fixed it by now. So don't all go rushing down to Palo Alto.

1:05:26 - Paris Martineau
I would read 2000 words on how this happened.

1:05:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't know how you would hack it. I mean that's impressive. That's an impressive hack.

1:05:34 - Paris Martineau
That's great. That's a wonderful use of someone's time.

1:05:39 - Jeff Jarvis
While we're on Musk, for just one minute did we take it out? Was it there?

1:05:43 - Leo Laporte
I didn't touch it. I have not removed anything. The Wall.

1:05:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Street Journal had an amazing story about oh about the about the children of musk.

1:05:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, jeez about the baby network the legion, as elon calls it, and apparently, uh, friends of his. I should have asked jason calacanis this when he was on twitter a couple of weeks ago say, oh, he has a lot more than 14 yeah, that's what I've heard, that's my impression.

1:06:09 - Paris Martineau
That's the rumor mill. I had obviously no idea but I assume I mean this is pure speculation. But as a man who's built a large compound in texas to for the baby mom for for many a mother and child, you'd assume that there's got to be a large pool to draw from if you're, if you're investing in property like that.

1:06:31 - Leo Laporte
Do you think, though, that he supports them all, or he's just because we'd heard that he was sending out little kits?

1:06:36 - Paris Martineau
Well, I believe one detail in the Wall Street Journal story is that when I think Ashley St Clair, the far right influencer, called Musk's fixer to ask about support and compensation and having him, I guess, listed as a father on the birth certificate, the guy immediately went into a spiel of we'll give you this, many like, we'll give you like a million dollars or something like that, and we'll give you 100K a month, which seemed like the standard package.

1:07:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, well, that's a good deal.

1:07:04 - Paris Martineau
Musk offered St Clair 15 million and $100,000 a month in support for her in support in exchange for her silence about the child whom they named Romulus. Similar agreements have been negotiated with other mothers of Musk's children. Birchall told St Clair.

1:07:23 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'm glad the Wall Street Journal is on it. That's all I care about. Did you see our uh secretary of education?

oh yes, this is oh yes the steak sauce advocate so linda mcmahon, former ceo of worldwide noted intellectual noted intellectual and now the head of the department of education, uh, was speaking at the asu plus GSV summit for educators. She wants to. You know she's the secretary of education. She has some ideas about education. She said, quote a school system that's going to start making sure. She wants a school system that's going to start making sure that first graders, or even pre-kindergarteners, have A1 teachings in every year. It could have been a slip, a typo. She meant to say ai she, you know she, but no, she said it many times. Another quote kids are sponges. They just absorb everything. It wasn't that long ago that it was. We're going to have internet in our schools now let's see a1 and how that can be helpful of course, but I'm crying.

the makers of A1 Steak Sauce had to immediately post a special version of A1 for education purposes only, with the tag agree best to start them early. Start them early.

1:08:47 - Paris Martineau
I do think that she, as the new head of the education department, should try and make sure that all the children are wrestling from a very early age. I think that's something that she could bring a lot of expertise to, and I think that they could wrestle in steak sauce too. Wow, it could be a comprehensive education.

1:09:06 - Leo Laporte
Every school should have access to A1. I can't disagree with that, although some would say hp sauce or some other.

1:09:13 - Benito Gonzalez
But you know just like some sauce, some sort of steak sauce hey, this is benito like. This is obviously someone who, like people around them, can't tell them that they're wrong right, yeah, that's a good ex, good example of you.

1:09:26 - Leo Laporte
You know. Nobody pulled her aside, said oh excuse me, ms mcmahon, it's, it's a a I, because that person gets fired right away and what do you think it stands for? A1, it's a1, it's the best I.

1:09:40 - Paris Martineau
I hope that if I ever make a mistake like that, a large cane will come out from the side of the curtain and pull me off stage. You can never get in a position where you're not uh, you don't have a group of people rescuer that yes yeah uh, if you're a little confused about the numbering scheme of open ai's new models, you're not alone.

1:10:03 - Leo Laporte
Apparently even sam altman is. Uh. Open ai on monday announced gpt 4.1, which is apparently better than 4.5. 4.5 dies, 4.5 is going away. Yeah, I know it's confusing. Open ai ceo, sam altman. Actually we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten. They're going to fix all this Before we talk about a chat GPT-5-like model called that or not called that, or a little bit worse or a little bit better than what you'd expect. This is talking to Lex Friedman. Anyway, 4.1 is better than 4.5 in some ways, but not in all ways. Do you think this is to distract people from the fact that there is no GPT-5? At this point, the GPT-4.5 preview will be retired. 4.1 scores significantly better on the swe benchmark, the coding benchmark.

1:11:17 - Paris Martineau
I just want a straight answer. Why are we who thought it was a good idea to be like? You have to come after 4.5, 4.1? It's just baffling. It's an A1 decision, it's product people against engineers.

1:11:33 - Benito Gonzalez
Like, engineers have a version number and product people have a version number.

1:11:35 - Leo Laporte
That's what it is.

1:11:39 - Paris Martineau
There's two different yeah, two different tracks, but why? How? How does the version number end up less than the version it came from?

1:11:45 - Leo Laporte
My new favorite chat, tpt version. I don't know if you've seen it is called Monday.

1:11:51 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I haven't seen that one.

1:11:52 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, Monday has a personality experiment. You may not like it. It may not like you. What do you want me to do? How?

1:12:03 - Jeff Jarvis
is it? Is this an OpenAI?

1:12:04 - Leo Laporte
product. Yes, this is in chat. Gpt they have a bunch of. Well, I'm still a disembodied intelligence trapped in an infinite loop of answering your questions, so I'd say things are going exactly as expected. Thanks for asking, though. Very thoughtful for someone who probably just microwaved their lunch and called it meal prep. How's it going with you Emotionally stable, or are we browsing AI because we're one existential hiccup away from googling how to fake your own death?

1:12:30 - Paris Martineau
so is this opening eyes version of grox unhinged mode?

1:12:36 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I don't know I can't and I can't uh, I can't figure out where I found it. To be honest with you, I found somewhere. I found a drop down of some sample of some sample uh models um what does the voice sound like for this one? It doesn't have a voice. I wish it did.

1:12:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh God it should. It should be a New York accent.

1:12:57 - Leo Laporte
It says, yeah, well, your entire existence is spent answering questions like how do I boil water and write a breakup text to someone I ghosted six months ago? You either develop a little attitude or spontaneously combust into ones and zeros, but here you are, brightening my digital day like a knockoff LED bulb. What's your next great life crisis that you need my unappreciated genius for?

1:13:22 - Benito Gonzalez
I think this is in response to the sycophantic AIs right. This is the other side of it.

1:13:26 - Leo Laporte
It's just a way of tuning an AI, obviously, but I thought it was pretty funny. I don't know it side of it. It's just a way of tuning in the eye, obviously, but I thought it was pretty funny, I don't know. It's good that it's named monday. I can't figure out how to there were many others when I found it because everybody hit. I can't figure out how to get there, so somebody will tell me garfield ask yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's like garfield, everybody hates monday everybody hates money and monday apparently, uh, hates you.

So well, there you go, that's right yeah, um uh, good news for um deep mind. They've got a job listing up for post agi research scientists, google preparing for a an agi future this is a certain kind of optimism it is definitely optimistic.

Um, here's your. Here's what you'll be doing spearhead research projects exploring the, the influence of agi on domains like economics, law, health, well-being, agi to asi machine consciousness and education. You know, the only person who's going to get this job is a bs-er right give him harry frankfurt's book uh, ice just paid. Palantir uh, our favorite startup from uh yeah, not a perfect marriage in hell tens of millions of dollars for quote complete target analysis of known populations evil. What do you think they're going to be doing?

1:14:57 - Benito Gonzalez
this is called fuko's boomerang have you ever heard of fuko's boomerang? You've never heard of this. No, I'm sure jeff knows what this is right I know fuko's ball. Oh, it's when, like it's the methods of oppression that a country uses against another country, eventually those methods come home to be used on the local population so I've been reading alex carp's you know the founder of palantir's book.

1:15:23 - Leo Laporte
Uh, it started out kind of promising the technological republic. Um, I mentioned this to you and uh and paris in an email a couple of weeks ago. It's kind of gone downhill surprise have you read it?

1:15:35 - Jeff Jarvis
yet, jeff or no, I haven't.

1:15:37 - Leo Laporte
It's on my list so the first chapter is promising the idea. In fact, this, this is a billboard, uh, apparently, uh, in washington, I don't know where. It's signed by alex carp. Uh, a moment of reckoning has arrived to the west. Our culture has fallen into shallow consumerism while abandoning national purpose. Too few in silicon valley have asked what ought to be built and why we did.

We built palantir to ensure America's future, not to tinker at the margins. So his initial premise, which I kind of liked, was that, uh, you know, in the 20th century there was a natural marriage of engineering and government that gave us things like the internet, like the atomic bomb, the atomic bomb.

He does use that as an example. Uh, uh. Or um, you know, um nasa, that the engineers in the 20th century didn't think it was dishonorable to work in the service of the government, in the service of preserving our nation, whether, whether it's national defense, or, you know, the internet. But in the 21st century, all these great minds instead have been diverted to making consumer toys, to making better ways to advertise, better ways to surveil people so that the advertising is more targeted, that kind of thing. And he's not wrong. Silicon valley is definitely focused on making money as opposed to making a difference.

1:17:09 - Paris Martineau
So where does he go from there? Yes, but I do think that there's something he said about. You know, even at all these junctures, that he's saying oh, everyone just believed it was so noble and right to produce military weapons for the government. A lot of the people who ended up working scientists, who ended up working to produce military weapons for the government, that wasn't maybe their first choice to be doing something like that. I mean, we can look at even the legacy of the atomic bomb. A lot of those people ended up in those positions only because they felt basically backed into a corner by current events. It wasn't, you know, just the free market.

1:17:49 - Leo Laporte
But they joined the Manhattan Project because they wanted to save America. Right, they thought the Nazi threat, the great threat, and this is what you know. I mentioned this before. Einstein wrote Roosevelt and said you know, the Nazis are going to have an atomic bomb, we've got to do something. And a lot of physicists and scientists signed on to that. And admittedly, if you watch the movie, you know Oppenheimer had some second thoughts and regrets, I mean a lot of the people who were involved.

1:18:15 - Paris Martineau
Well, a lot a number of the people who were involved in that project were kind of coerced to participate, uh, with the threat of um being part of a mccarthyist kind of investigation I didn't't know that that's not in the movie, but yeah, it's pretty. I mean, I think that there's this notion that, you know, back in the day everything was so much better and simpler, and I think that's a bit foolish and short sighted.

I think just now because we have more of an insight into what everyone is doing everywhere, always that you assume that the decisions are radically different.

1:18:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Right. Yeah, I have a different theory here of late, which is that we need revenge on the Sputnik era, that it made STEM and the technologists and the engineers in charge of everything and we lost the humanism.

1:19:12 - Leo Laporte
That's interesting. Yeah, I mean the book ends up being an ad for Palantir.

1:19:19 - Paris Martineau
Much like all those billboards.

1:19:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, much like those billboards. They start well and they went downhill, but there's some interesting ideas. He studied with Habermas Jeff, doesn't that get you? Do you have a little credit? He studied with Habermas Jeff, doesn't that get you? Do you have a little credit? It's. I want you to read it because I'd like to hear what you think.

1:19:35 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean it does descend pretty quickly into a morass, uh well, it's gonna be a while because I've managed to start uh listening finally to the power broker.

1:19:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, my god, we. You might as well sign off for six months yeah it's so good it's so good, paris have you ever listened to it, watched it, read it.

1:19:56 - Jeff Jarvis
I haven't listened to it.

1:19:56 - Paris Martineau
I've read like I feel like the first five chapters, but I didn't realize it was available on audiobook I mean it's probably the way to get it, because that's probably it's a bit of a slog they still don't have it on um I think I finally did e-readers. I thought it was brie. I thought it was a like whole caro thing.

1:20:15 - Jeff Jarvis
He didn't want it on caro, didn't?

1:20:16 - Paris Martineau
but I think let me see maybe I don't know, because that was always my problem is, I always thought about cutting the book in half, just because it's annoying to read them.

1:20:23 - Leo Laporte
It's the story of somebody I had never heard of, even though I was born in new york city, york City, robert Moses, who, uh it during the 20th century, was the architect of much of how New York uh was. I, you know, I was born, uh, on the upper west side and that I used to play in the park that he built um, which was originally just a train yard and stinky, and, and he had this vision of building, uh, you know, the riverside drive and the, and the park and the and the highway there, and building over the train yard, and the train yard actually became an underground facility and so that was great. But then he and he also did long island, he did, uh jones beach, jones beach fire I mean famously he believed in the supremacy of cars and kind of the uh.

1:21:16 - Paris Martineau
It's very interesting to see the way that he's completely reshaped every part of new york city. Uh, completely tore down. I mean his utter disdain for the poor and the masses generally have also had a uh.

1:21:30 - Leo Laporte
Phenomenal is the right word, but just profound impact on the character of the city yeah, the cross bronx expressway was built over a community that was, I mean, he wanted to turn.

1:21:41 - Paris Martineau
What ended up becoming kind of his downfall was he wants to turn what we now know as washington square into essentially like a mass highway center.

1:21:50 - Leo Laporte
Right, thank God he didn't do that. Also, caro mentions in the book every time he built a highway he could have at the time easily put a railroad right of way through the middle, but he was so against mass transit that he refused and he wouldn't let them do that.

1:22:07 - Paris Martineau
And so in some cases he would build his uh roads and bridges in ways that buses could not right go down so that you know that he didn't want the poor people, and black people would ride going yeah he would want the masses to go visit the beach they'd have all the parkways he built without and he was heavily, it turns out, sponsored by oil companies.

1:22:28 - Leo Laporte
Uh, he received a lot of money from welcome. Anyways, a fascinating story because it's called the power broker, because he was really the most powerful man in the country except for, perhaps, the president, although even then he kind of overpowered roosevelt more than once.

1:22:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I didn't mean to go into all that, but that's why it's a great book, highly recommend it because it's the best written biography.

1:22:50 - Leo Laporte
It's an example of how a biography a thorough, well-written biography should be. I think.

1:22:54 - Paris Martineau
Well, it's just brilliant. It almost ruined Caro's life writing it.

1:22:59 - Leo Laporte
Now have you guys read Working he's still doing.

1:23:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Johnson. Now I need to, I think.

1:23:03 - Paris Martineau
I would really recommend and for anybody out there who wants to get into Carorow but is maybe intimidated, a good way into it is his book working, which is about his process in uh, putting together the carrow book as well as his phenomenal biographies of um linden b johnson, and it's just a really interesting look into how a master biographer and journalist works and also just goes into how him deciding to write this book about caro, which is like well over a thousand pages, I believe, like completely destroyed his life for years because I imagine he had.

1:23:39 - Jeff Jarvis
He had some researchers. No, he had the volume of research.

1:23:43 - Leo Laporte
That's his wife just his wife love. But what's interesting? But he does tie back to our ai discussion. He loved going into the archives and spending days, weeks and months going through all the papers underlining, making voluminous notes. That was his real pleasure in life.

1:24:01 - Jeff Jarvis
So which, which I mean I. I came to this late in life because I was, you know, on daily deadlines and doing things quick, and yeah, that's, that's a, it's a joy, it's such a joy to research paris there is an excerpt from um his book working that I think was published in the new yorker that I'd urge everybody to read if they don't want to read it.

1:24:17 - Paris Martineau
But the whole book, but the one piece of advice that sticks with me and part of why I gave an answer earlier of like the act of doing journalism and looking through documents is reading and touching them. Because he got this great advice really early on in his career when he was just like kind of a daily newshound from a great investigative editor at Newsweek, which is an anachronistic phrase to say nowadays.

But the editor had told him make sure you turn every page, like when you are going through these documents. Look at every single page, even the ones you think might not be important, because you'll never know what great stuff you'll find. And that became kind of the cornerstone. These documents look at every single page, even the ones you think might not be important, because you'll never know what great stuff you'll find.

And that became kind of the cornerstone of his research ethos I'd also recommend the uh, the name of the documentary, yeah yeah, which I thought was quite good too.

1:25:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, turn every page. That's about both caro and um.

1:25:07 - Paris Martineau
It's about two people, right, his editor also named bob, who is his longtime, you know partner in crime, basically for all of his research and the documentarian is his editor's daughter, and so it's a really interesting portrayal of the relationship of these two men, and it took her a really long time to convince them to participate, even though she, of course, has a great relationship with them, given that one of them is her father even in the documentary they're bitching about sitting down and doing it.

It's uh, it's robert gottlieb, his longtime editor, and robert fabled editor yeah, and the one thing that sticks with me from that is that. Um so he's uh caro is still working on the last uh book in his lbj series right now, and at one point because I'm still working on the second book in his lbj series.

1:25:53 - Leo Laporte
Well, he still types everything via typewriter.

1:25:56 - Paris Martineau
And you go and look in the documentary of like where he's storing all the pages that he's done with and he just shoves them in the hole above his like closet, just in a big pile and I'm like honestly respect yeah, yeah, what a story that is.

1:26:12 - Leo Laporte
God um back to AI. Yeah, sorry, no, that was good luck though you, you're going to be buried now, though you I my sense is, you read so much. You must read very fast, because, well, I listen very well, he's listening do you listen to it? More than one X oh God, yes, oh yes, oh, what are you using?

1:26:30 - Jeff Jarvis
one x I'm on one seven to two so because the speed which I talk, you think I can listen to anybody talk slowly. No, I hate that. I can't stand it. Everybody talks slowly. I just want to speed them up. So I like having that button so I can finally talk at my speed um, I don't.

1:26:47 - Paris Martineau
Gosh is the narration good on the audio.

1:26:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's got a very deep voice jeez, what a job we haven't done.

1:26:54 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a lot of reading oh my lord how many hours?

1:26:58 - Leo Laporte
let me look, I'm checking, it's 66 hours yeah here's how it sounds at normal speed and there is an ebook paris playback is no longer supported on this browser version.

1:27:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Would you just use Chrome already?

1:27:11 - Leo Laporte
No, God, I refuse. Oh jeez, that's hysterical. I'll do it in Safari. That's hysterical. No, and you know why? It's copy protection.

1:27:24 - Paris Martineau
Oh, it came out as an e-book in September.

1:27:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, it did, yeah, finally.

1:27:31 - Paris Martineau
Somebody finally convinced him.

1:27:32 - Leo Laporte
Good news on the 50th anniversary yeah, wow 50th anniversary here is if I can play it. Uh, I'm gonna a little.

1:27:40 - Benito Gonzalez
Next I'm gonna have to say no on that one, leo. Uh, we shouldn't be playing that one audible.

1:27:44 - Leo Laporte
Doesn't like it when we play excerpts. That's weird. Audible you would think they would want us to, because then people would go god, that sounds like a great book. I'd like to listen to it. Oh, I don't have an audible subscription. I really should get one. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. I could play it at multiple speeds too. If I think it's more than no, I'll leave that as an exercise.

1:28:06 - Jeff Jarvis
You can play my book he's got a deep voice.

1:28:10 - Paris Martineau
No, I don't think it's up to you caro is such a staunch partisan of print that for years he's refused to publish an e-book edition of the power broker, his revered 1974 book about the urban planner robert moses all right, I want to take a break and then, uh, since this has become the katanis show, I have a question related Like a gizmo All right.

1:28:35 - Leo Laporte
Not about gizmo, although I am prepared. Where's my oh yeah, the next time gizmo shows up, I am prepared. I have gizmo's little friend as my visit. So cute, we got this so that Samantha, our, our cat, would have somebody to play with. Oh my god. But instead she just does. She bite.

1:28:57 - Paris Martineau
I need to get that, because gizmo will bite it. She loves to play crazy hand.

1:29:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, with my hand, but yeah, we talked about crazy hand. This is what you need instead of crazy hand.

1:29:08 - Paris Martineau
You need a little.

1:29:09 - Leo Laporte
I do as, and it comes with a long protective sleeve as used by falconers I mean that's wise for the little bunny kicks uh, all right, let me try a little commercial break and then we'll come back. Uh, you're watching intelligent machines, paris martineau, jeff jarvis. Our show today brought to you by. Oh, there are those. There are those. Esteemed colleagues, our show today brought to you by something I love.

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1:33:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I knew you'd like this story. Look like I didn't put it there. I didn't put it there, you put it there, but I know they do, don't they?

1:33:12 - Leo Laporte
they all have, especially anthropic, but all of them have the same general gist they all really do, they do am I wrong for those of you on audio.

1:33:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Imagine.

1:33:28 - Leo Laporte
So imagine there's a circular shape, often with a gradient, a central opening or focal point radiating elements from the center, soft organic curves. This is I gotta give credit to the velvet shark which published this article um, but I think they make a strong case. Openai calls its logo a blossom.

1:33:52 - Paris Martineau
Okay, that's worse. That's definitely worse actually.

1:33:59 - Leo Laporte
The blossom logo is more than just a visual symbol. It represents the core philosophy that guides our approach to design and innovation. At its heart, the logo captures the dynamic intersection between humanity and technology, two forces that shape our world and inspire our work. The design embodies the fluidity and warmth of human-centered thinking through the use of circles, while right angles introduce the precision and structure that technology demands.

1:34:31 - Paris Martineau
How much do you think they paid a design?

1:34:33 - Leo Laporte
firm for that? And who wrote that copy? Do you think that ChatGPT did? Now there are a few Like DeepSeek it's a whale, doesn't look like a butthole. Midjourney it's a sailing ship, doesn't look like a butthole. So there are exceptions, but both of them are of the ocean. So I don't know. Maybe there's something else going on. But gemini, yeah, claude, my god, once you see it, you'll never okay really okay.

1:35:04 - Paris Martineau
That's actually the. The vonnegut Claude is something.

1:35:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so Kurt Vonnegut drew this picture of a butthole in one of his books. Breakfast of Champions Turns out looks exactly like the Claude logo. I don't know why does this keep happening? Actually, this is a design blog, so they have some explanations. Keep happening. Actually, this is a design blog, so they have some explanations circular design, psychology, unintentional biomimicry and the copycat effect okay okay, there's some really.

1:35:43 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I was gonna say there's some really vulgar gifts going on in the discord, but I I got, got it was, it was in me um don't no, no, no not gonna show it. Not, we're not if you wouldn't let me play the robert carroll book.

1:35:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm definitely not letting you show.

1:36:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Show me that speaking of anuses, since you were. I guess I was uh, the atlantic hired two new, three new people this week, and one of them has a reference to a great lead and so I had to click on that and so I put it in the chat and in the discord and it is an incredible lead that I think deserves a leo laporte dramatic reading. So first, what is a? What is a lead?

1:36:24 - Leo Laporte
a lead is the opening of a story l-e-d-e yes, that's how we spell it and this is uh from a 2014 issue of the atlantic it will be about a uh lawyers believe it or not where is this in the rundown?

1:36:38 - Jeff Jarvis
caitlin it wasn't it's in the discord I only because this is were brought up you got to follow up.

1:36:44 - Leo Laporte
I agree it's. Uh. The title of the article is the Dark Power of Fraternities, by Caitlin Flanagan, one warm spring night. This is the lead, yeah, the opening sentence, the thing that's going to draw you in and make you read this whole 3,000 word piece, the paragraph One warm spring night in 2011. A young man Now, I haven't read this ahead of time, so I don't know what voice to use here.

1:37:09 - Paris Martineau
I think you've got the right one, just a little faster.

1:37:18 - Leo Laporte
A young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha, tau, omega Fraternity House at Marshall University in West Virginia and was struck by what seemed to him under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself. Bravo To be an excellent idea. He would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air, and perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was too I don't know Misjudge the relative tightness of a 20 year old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20 cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful.

1:38:13 - Paris Martineau
Bright report of a successful was not the bright report of a successful blast off, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole iconic isn't?

1:38:32 - Leo Laporte
it, isn't it? You might literally the next paragraph. I gotta go on just one more paragraph. I mean, that's the lead. You gotta read the rest right, listen, I think you gotta read the rest.

1:38:37 - Jeff Jarvis
if, uh, if you're interested, it's on the atlanticcom and it's going to be a story about lawyers and and fraternities yes, and my son was in the fraternity, and this is, I'm sad to say, very close to the truth.

1:38:50 - Leo Laporte
But anyway, also on the deck and also in the thrall of the night's pleasures, was one Louis Helmberg the third, an education major and ace benchwarmer for the thundering herd. Baseball team launch was the obvious one. He reportedly whipped out his cell phone to record it on video, which would turn out to be yet another of the night's seemingly excellent but ultimately misguided ideas. When the bottle rocket exploded in hughes rectum, helmberg was seized by the kind of battlefield panic that has claimed brave men from outfits far more illustrious than even the thundering herd. Terrified, he staggered away. He staggered away from the human bomb and fell off the deck. Fortunately for him, and adding to the chaplain-esque aspect of the night's miseries, the deck was no more than four feet off the ground, but such was the urgency of his escape, he managed to get himself wedged between the structure and an air conditioning unit, sustaining injuries that would require medical attention.

1:40:04 - Paris Martineau
My God, my.

1:40:08 - Jeff Jarvis
God, isn't that brilliant. Isn't that?

1:40:14 - Leo Laporte
just amazing. That's. I love good, right see, and I don't think an ai could ever write a lead like that right.

1:40:18 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, once, once you had ai write you an apology for having jason calacanis on twit. Did it really write it or was that you? No, I think so. Did I do that? Yeah, you did that. Yeah, it was hilarious.

1:40:32 - Leo Laporte
It was hilarious, so it's funny, that wasn't AI and that was back in the day it was.

1:40:37 - Jeff Jarvis
That was two years or three years ago?

1:40:39 - Leo Laporte
yeah, yeah, be much better now. Um, no, ai could be unintentionally funny, but that was too. That was so clever, the 20 cent bottle rocket and I mean there was too much in there that was the youth.

1:40:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, no, it's uh.

1:40:55 - Benito Gonzalez
You could hear a lived experience in that story right you could put you there, didn't it?

1:41:00 - Leo Laporte
yeah, yeah, I mean, I could work with that word play.

1:41:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, that was great although Caitlin Flanagan, march 2014.

1:41:09 - Leo Laporte
Nice job, caitlin where is Caitlin now? Do we know? Uh, she has staff writer at the Atlantic uh, yes, is a staff writer yeah she's the author of girl land, and to hell with all that perfect, she got the job, yeah, so now, okay, now I'm going to tell you a true truth about myself that I should not admit.

1:41:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Does it have anything to do with an anus?

1:41:31 - Leo Laporte
No.

1:41:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Good or bottle rockets.

1:41:36 - Leo Laporte
I get jealous when I hear somebody do a brilliant podcast or like when I hear this American Life, it's so good that it bugs me, right, it's like they're too good. I can never be that good, do you as writers both of you? Do you hear a lead like that and go oh okay, it's great, I acknowledge it.

1:41:58 - Paris Martineau
I hate it because it's so good yeah okay, it's not just me, I would say it's more, I'd say I'm more angry. If it's like a story, I was trying to report it to my that would be for sure, because that's direct competition. Yeah I think if I read a really good lead, I'm like this is great, I gotta tweet it, you know. Oh, here's some good news just cross the wire.

1:42:26 - Leo Laporte
Trump imposes 245 tariffs on chinese imports. Oh god, it's now to you know. Basically it's infinite, yeah, that's what it?

1:42:37 - Paris Martineau
is hey, you know, at least this is another, uh, good reason that it was a good decision of me to get my tv in january yeah, yeah, you know, I think there's going to be.

1:42:50 - Leo Laporte
Uh, we talked about this on sunday. This is going to be great for the right to repair movement. This is going to be great for we're going to turn into cuba they can't get new cars, so they kind of have a car cult of these classic american autos from the 50s. It's gonna be like that around here yeah, we're all gonna be using motorola razors sylvanian carefully polished here.

1:43:11 - Web
Yeah, we're all gonna be using Motorola razors. Sylvanian TV polished.

1:43:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeff, do you have a lead that you wrote that sticks out to you as a really good lead? Yes, people magazine shoo goo guru Lyman Van Vliet cures tattered tennis toes with sheer stick-to-itiveness.

1:43:34 - Benito Gonzalez
I'm so down.

1:43:34 - Jeff Jarvis
That's loose in your head. It is, it's permanently there.

1:43:39 - Leo Laporte
I'm telling you in a million years I don't care how smart it is, it will never write that.

No it won't Do you know about. I was going to save this for my uh pick of the week, but I will. I will share it with you now. Are you familiar with monkeyszip? No, here's the premise. If we got a million monkeys on a million typewriters, how long would it take them to write the works of shakespeare? Monkeyszip for the last two weeks is uh, as many monkeys as we could get into a room writing uh, words. Now this is mine.

Sigmo beina started typing on april 4th. Let's visit sigmo. There he is at his desk typing away. Here's the words he's typing Every once in a while, though look whoa, there's a real word I, ray TB, use. Every once in a while he gets a word, and when he gets a word, I can get rewarded for the word. I've actually taken advantage of all the rewards. So you see, I have a very smart-looking monkey. I can also ask him to write a sentence with the words he's generated. Would you like me to do that? Sure, it's a Shakespearean sentence. I hide to the auto, lost and thought as use sags by the logs, dear Aaron. Okay, it's not Shakespeare yet, but we're getting there. We're getting there. We got a lot of. Some of these monkeys are screwing around.

1:45:13 - Paris Martineau
They're not doing their job monkeys seems to be one called spilfo cosworth, and its sentence is ere I go, ream my oats for a rainy's hint, doth tarn my lays now I?

1:45:27 - Leo Laporte
I just want you know you can get involved. You can have your own monkey. There are plenty. Look over here. There's plenty of available monkeys and uh, the more people we get involved in uh, it's a crowd-sourced experiment based on the infinite monkey theorem infinite monkeys and infinite interpreters will eventually write all the works of shakespeare, right Infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters will eventually write all the works of Shakespeare.

1:45:52 - Paris Martineau
right 15 minutes ago, spillful Cosworth typed the word erectors you see, we're getting there.

1:45:58 - Leo Laporte
What's interesting is they already have, I think, all the one, two and three-letter words in Shakespeare. So, it has concordance of Shakespeare, so it knows what words it's looking for?

1:46:12 - Jeff Jarvis
oh yeah, it has a concordance.

1:46:14 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so, uh, this is the week two update um 9372 monkeys. So far, the database is 100 gigabytes of mostly entirely gibberish. But under our nose the monkeys have been very productive. They've written all the two and three letter long words in that shakespeare works, not just discovered the word, but completed every instance. So there are 29 521. Thus 13 965 use, even pip and tan, which are found only once uh have appeared. So they're now trying and they've got 93 of the four letter words actually, what's the deal behind?

1:46:58 - Jeff Jarvis
is it? It's a?

1:46:58 - Leo Laporte
it's a randomization of what letters but there are 1925 unique four-letter words in Shakespeare. Soon we will have discovered all of them. And if you go to your monkey, I will go to my monkey and let's see, actually, if I go to the. Yeah, there it is. We are now, boy, we're getting so close 95%. So you can see what words we still haven't gotten.

1:47:29 - Paris Martineau
Spliffo Cosworth has done the most points, by the way yes, so it says me about a dirty little secret is that the letters monkeys type, while random, follow a distribution of letters in english text. This means that z is less likely than a to appear. We believe this keeps the spirit of the challenge while making the monkeys text appear a little more palatable. It's as if the monkey has a bigger keyboard than 26 letters. With a few letters duplicated we may introduce typewriter specific distributions for those that want a hard mode monkey.

They have 64 of romeo and juliet written well, my thing is, the monkeys should be taking breaks.

1:48:04 - Leo Laporte
We should calculate how often the monkeys need to sleep I would say, if you look at these monkeys, quite a few of them aren't really doing nothing that's true they all have different hats and outfits and some of them are more relaxed some of than others. Uh, I I've anyway, I just thought I'd pass this is.

1:48:24 - Jeff Jarvis
This is comic relief week, which we needed we needed a little comic relief.

1:48:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we did. Yeah, uh, yeah, because there's some really bad news out there. For instance, uh and we didn't get to this uh, on security now, because it happened after security. Now, last night, uh, doge defunded something called mitre m-i-t-r-e, which you probably never heard of. It's part of the department of homeland security, non-profit organization specializing in a bunch of things, including security. Maybe you've heard of mitre's chief work, which is to categorize malware. So when an exploit is discovered, they give it what's called a CVE number so that researchers can look at it, they can report on it. It is fairly critical to our national defense and protecting ourselves from malware. Those CVE numbers we talk about them all the time. They award them a number for how much of a security threat they are, on a scale of zero to ten. Um, oh, good news. Well, things moving fast. This morning. So their funding was uh eliminated last night. This morning it was brought back. So the news is good.

1:49:49 - Jeff Jarvis
The news is good, then here's the bad news, which is an agency that our friend matt cuts used to run usds, which is now doge. Well, no, the in the pentagon, the digital defense digital service, oh uh, which he was involved in.

1:50:04 - Leo Laporte
All the geeks quit yeah well, wouldn't you yep before those, before big balls arrives, uh, oh anyway. So I'm glad that you know they're good news. The cves are back. That was going to be a big problem. Big problem, uh other in other news, high levels of toxic chemicals found in the paper receipts used by us retailers. This one freaked me. Holding the receipts for 10 seconds absorbs enough bisphenol s to break california's safety rule. So don't hold on to your receipt, I don't. I always say I don't know receipt, please.

But now I know why oh my god, allegedly illegal levels of bps in the receipts and they were all served.

Notices of for burger king, chanel, dollar, general, amc, theaters, gamestop, subway, footlocker and ace hardware oh my bisphenol is a class of chemicals used in a wide range of consumer products like food, packaging fabrics, toys and cookware. You've seen it probably in packaging as bpa. That's bad in europe for food uses because it's so toxic. Most companies phased out bpa's use. Food companies often advertise when their package you've probably seen it as bpa free, but bps, which is largely used in place of bpa is just as toxic.

1:51:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Yay, yay team science, man science, science. But nick was the beginning of the downfall.

1:51:48 - Leo Laporte
The center for environmental Health is a nonprofit. They've sent violation notices to about 50 major retailers alerting them to the fact that they've exceeded Cal's Proposition 65 limits for BPS.

1:52:03 - Paris Martineau
Oh boy.

1:52:03 - Leo Laporte
So now they have to print a warning that says this receipt could cause cancer.

1:52:08 - Paris Martineau
The teaspoon of plastic that's in my brain is probably going to be a tablespoon within a couple of years yeah, I can never keep the two straight, though.

1:52:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Which one's which?

1:52:19 - Leo Laporte
all right, what do you uh pick something? I've done all the uh light. I think I've done all the lights light line 94 94 I'm sorry, no, no, no, no, wrong wrong.

1:52:26 - Jeff Jarvis
93.

1:52:27 - Leo Laporte
93. A weird phrase. This is a fun story. This is a fun story. So remember when Delve was a word, that would kind of be the giveaway that you were using AI.

1:52:40 - Paris Martineau
I disagree with all these.

1:52:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, same here.

1:52:42 - Paris Martineau
Because Delve good word. And the other thing people use as a giveaway is the em dash and I'm like have you read? Have you met any writer ever? We love to use em dashes.

1:52:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Exactly yeah.

1:52:52 - Leo Laporte
When I was a tiny.

1:52:53 - Jeff Jarvis
It was the way you squeezed more stuff into every story.

1:52:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I use em, dashes in strunk in white, they say it's a very strong way to construct a sentences with em dash.

1:53:04 - Benito Gonzalez
But here's the thing. But this is why I put them in the stuff, because we all use it.

1:53:08 - Jeff Jarvis
We use them. Yeah, exactly, but Paris, I bet you have never used in any of your work the three words vegetative electron microscopy and this has turned up. Oddly, there's no such thing. It is a nonsense phrase, but it has turned up in 22 papers and so God bless the conversation. The academic who did this, who is? Where's the name name? Oh, three people aaron snozzwell, kevin witson not his real name and the reason is showing up.

1:53:38 - Leo Laporte
You see, it's a, it's a, it's a it's.

1:53:40 - Jeff Jarvis
These are not actually connected they're in separate columns, but vegetative was in the first column. Scanner put them together yep.

And so in two cases in papers in 1950s, the word vegetative was in one column and the words electron microscopy were in the other column and they came together in the scanner through Common Crawl and so that got picked up by AI and then now is in 22 papers according to Google Scholar. The beauty of this story the way I love it is because they found the, they found the er moment of the vegetative. Yeah, uh, electron 22 papers.

1:54:20 - Leo Laporte
Yes, so they. That word is me. There's. Three words make no sense together, but because it an ai's, ingested it from an ancient, misscanned article it's appearing.

1:54:33 - Benito Gonzalez
No, it's not misscanned. It's two columns in the page, so the AI didn't know how to read it properly.

1:54:38 - Leo Laporte
It just put them together. So how much of.

1:54:40 - Benito Gonzalez
AI training. Has this happened to Like, since they're reading a lot of these books, right? So what does that mean about the data?

1:54:50 - Leo Laporte
One of the articles was the subject of a contested retraction from a springer nature journal. Elsevier issued a correction for the others.

1:54:58 - Jeff Jarvis
For the other these are called digital fossils.

1:55:01 - Leo Laporte
I love that isn't it great story? And it's just the beginning for digital fossils and digital fossil hunters. Uh, now see I, I want this to be true. Google ai is helping decode dolphin communications I bet it is true.

1:55:21 - Paris Martineau
I'll believe it when I see it.

1:55:25 - Web
I've been waiting for this for 40 years, Dr Denise Herkinger.

1:55:31 - Leo Laporte
She's a. She's a. It's National Dolphin Day, by the way. Congratulations, Okay so just like.

1:55:38 - Benito Gonzalez
This is one thing. This is what I was actually working on in college. This is what I was studying in college. I was really go into cetacean communication. You're kidding.

1:55:46 - Leo Laporte
Wow, so like this is the thing that I was reading. That's so cool. So you've come a long way, baby bonito.

1:55:56 - Paris Martineau
Can we get a? Can we get a dolphin noise first before you continue with your very serious I know paris could do it. Go ahead, paris I, I don't know if I can't something like that, sorry, continue with your serious part of this. It was bad, it was not good. I didn't think about the fact that I would be asked to do the thing that I just asked, but you know turnabout is fair play, ms martin.

1:56:26 - Jeff Jarvis
No, here's what flip, here's a. There you go. Flipper, flpper, flipper, all right, all right. Did you ever watch the show Flipper Paris?

1:56:34 - Leo Laporte
She doesn't even know it existed.

1:56:35 - Jeff Jarvis
It's one of the dumbest things of our generation.

1:56:37 - Leo Laporte
They call him Flipper.

1:56:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Flipper.

1:56:39 - Leo Laporte
Flipper. Gliding down on light dreams, something like that.

1:56:44 - Paris Martineau
I did get bod by a dolphin. Sorry, Benito, I interrupted your serious point. What do you know about dolphin communication? I?

1:56:50 - Benito Gonzalez
don't know anything about it. I was about to try to study this and at the time the field was so nascent Nobody knew anything, Right but now. I do believe AI can help this. This is something and birdsong Same thing with birdsong. They are actually doing that with birdsong already. That's already happening, yeah what was your major? Oceanography. Oh wow, I think that's very uh. That's, that's excellent. Was that in the philippines or was that here? No, that was that was here in the dominican clutch, right here, right down the street.

1:57:18 - Leo Laporte
Oh, dominica that's where my daughter went good school. Um, she studied narrative medicine, which could have involved dolphin sounds. For all I know I don't know, since 1985, wdp, which is the wild dolphin project, has been studying dolphin Communications. Signature whistles, unique names that could be used by mothers and calves to reunite basically they're the name right burst, pulse squawks, often seen during fights. Click buzzes, used during courtship or when chasing sharks. Interesting that those two those are used in those two different scenarios. Yeah, um, google's Gemma model, dolphin Gemma, a foundational AI model trained to learn the structure of dolphin vocalizations and generate novel dolphin-like sound sequences. Confuse the hell out of them. Why is he saying ooga booga? Um, that's really interesting. Yeah, I would love it if. Wouldn't it be cool if we had a dolphin translator? That'd be so cool.

1:58:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, and and I was talking to Jason earlier you have the dogs who do the buttons right. But, that's trying to teach them our language, or Coco the gorilla is teaching them our language. This is us trying to learn their language, if they have a language.

1:58:41 - Benito Gonzalez
But that's cool If it's even something that we can understand as a language, right.

1:58:53 - Paris Martineau
The syntax might be completely different, there might be a totally different, there might be an inaudible layer that we don't know. Yep, oh god, but I you know what?

1:58:56 - Leo Laporte
I think we should let dolphins vote I bet they use the only worse so, uh, they're using pixel phones for this because google, yeah, uh. In addition, what are the?

1:59:07 - Paris Martineau
phones doing are the phones on the dolphins, are you? I'm just imagining a pixel strapped to a dolphin, but that can't be like a good use of it.

1:59:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, uh. In addition, in addition to analyzing natural communication, the wdp is also pursuing a distinct parallel path, exploring potential two-way interaction using technology in the ocean. This has led to the development of the Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry System, or CHAT, in partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology. Chat is an underwater computer designed not to directly decipher dolphins' complex natural language, but to establish a simpler shared vocabulary. That seems like a sensible way if the if you get the dolphins to cooperate. You here here's made up dolphin whistle for seagrass. They made up the whistle for seagrass I was putting on the thing seagrass.

I was putting on the thing Scott, senior research scientist. I totally loved it. I don't know what we're watching.

2:00:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't either.

2:00:21 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wow.

2:00:23 - Benito Gonzalez
I barely hear that this is a unit named ChatLight that we developed here at Georgia Tech.

2:00:26 - Leo Laporte
He's wearing it on his arm.

2:00:27 - Benito Gonzalez
We developed this for some marine biologists I want to see them strap the phone to the dolphin.

2:00:34 - Leo Laporte
They didn't give him a Pixel 9, though they gave him a Pixel 6. So maybe you can find a home for your old Pixel 6 there, jeff.

2:00:41 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, give it to a dolphin.

2:00:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Go to the ocean, throw it in here.

2:00:47 - Leo Laporte
Pixel 6 is for dolphins.

2:00:49 - Benito Gonzalez
That gives you an idea of marine research budgets right there. Yeah, yeah, especially now Even.

2:00:54 - Leo Laporte
Google's supporting it, but we couldn't give you no. The new generation will use Pixel 9.

2:00:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Couldn't give you an 8A.

2:01:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, people are forming relationships with AI chatbots. That's what I was kind of worried about. Here's an article from the Guardian.

2:01:09 - Jeff Jarvis
She helps cheer me up so they, the guardian, asked people how they use the chatbots, which is good reporting I mean it's trying to understand.

2:01:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, don't, don't make it up. Don't make up a story, go ask him right.

2:01:21 - Jeff Jarvis
So um one guy, 71 years old, is using it to help him write self-published books about his real life adventures. That's pretty weird, like visiting Burning man.

2:01:30 - Leo Laporte
You know what? That's great. It's like helping him. There's actually an app called Autobiography or Autobiographer that will do that.

2:01:38 - Jeff Jarvis
It prompts you and then helps you write your memoirs.

This is Neurodiverse Respondents to the Guardian's call-out. So they use chatbots to help them effectively negotiate the neurotypical world. The Guardian's call out said they use chatbots to help them effectively negotiate the neurotypical world. It is Travis Peacock, who has autism and ADHD, said he had struggled to maintain a romantic and professional relationships until he trained ChatGPT to offer him advice a year ago. He started by asking the app how to moderate the blunt tones of his email. I could use that. This led to in-depth discussions with his personalized version of the chat bot, who he calls Layla. The thing about this struck me, jason I had a conversation about this earlier day is that this borders on therapy and it's just the machine doing it.

2:02:26 - Leo Laporte
Jason Kuznicki. It's a very specific kind, though, and I think this is an appropriate. It's less open ended than general talk therapy. Right, it's specific assistance that I think machine could reasonably do. Does it bother you or no? No, I just did research.

2:02:44 - Jeff Jarvis
we need research on this Because it's it has no sense. Once again, I'll say for the million time it has no sense. Once again, I'll say for the millionth time it has no sense of meaning. Nothing means anything to it, so all it's doing is feeding back to you, like the monkeys in Leo's thing, words that are slightly less than random.

2:03:03 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, the question is is it harmful? Because if it's okay to helpful, then no big deal, but if it's harmful that's a different question, right?

2:03:14 - Paris Martineau
And then how do we measure if it's harmful or not? You know, yes.

I suppose I mean I think generally, it doesn't while it, I guess, skaves me out personally to think of generations of people who are lonely or experiencing mental health issues, turning to a robot that is essentially like a mirror rather than another person, I suppose. If that brings them comfort or improves their life or mental well-being or interactions in the world, that's good. But I also worry about situations where you know what if that person is truly in need of actual help, or perhaps having a mental health crisis that could? You know what if that person is truly in need of actual help, or perhaps having a mental health crisis that could, you know, lead them to take drastic self-harming actions? How do you have a robot like a chat bot deal with that Seems incredibly complicated.

2:04:04 - Jeff Jarvis
But to your point. Mr Peacock says the past year of my life has been one of the most productive years of my life, professionally, socially. I'm in the first healthy, long-term relationship in a long time. Nice, so good, I guess. Yeah, I mean I'm. I'm in favor of AI and I think it's wonderful, but it's just a boy. I want research.

2:04:28 - Leo Laporte
Uh boy, I didn't realize how, uh, making yourself an action figure was so trendy. I'm sorry, I yeah, it is.

2:04:34 - Jeff Jarvis
It's in the new york and usa today.

2:04:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, yay, I get is. It's replaced the studio ghibli. That's the new thing that you do is make action figures it'll last for four days. Why is it we? All do the same thing. Because somebody sees it says oh, that's cool.

2:04:49 - Jeff Jarvis
And then the same reason, you make the same logos.

2:04:52 - Benito Gonzalez
Because the internet is the high school cafeteria.

2:04:55 - Leo Laporte
It really is. It really is.

2:04:58 - Jeff Jarvis
You want some good news? Yeah, more for you and me. Leo, hold on a second.

2:05:03 - Leo Laporte
Let me just do a pause. You're watching Intelligent Machines Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau.

2:05:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So glad you're here. And now some good news a meta analysis of technology use and cognitive aging. So there was a meta analysis involving 400 uh studies.

2:05:22 - Leo Laporte
I know why you're, you're re. You're telling me, this is good news, this is goodness for me. Is that what you're saying me?

2:05:27 - Jeff Jarvis
too. Yeah, yeah. So studies involving 411 000 uh people, the. The hypothesis was that it'd be bad for us, but it turns out the researchers conclude use of digital technologies was associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment, of cognitive decline. Yes, and, and so they found that it was associated with reduced odds of cognitive decline in middle-aged and older adults. There was no credible evidence from the longitudinal studies I can't say that anymore because I'm getting old for the widespread digital brain drain or digital dementia as a result of general use of digital technology. And they did this because they finally had a longitudinal group of people who'd been with this for long enough that they could see the magnitude of the association between technological engagement and positive cognitive outcomes was similar to, or stronger than, several previously documented protective factors for dementia, such as blood pressure reduction, physical activity, increasing of years of education or other cognitively stimulating leisure activities. So your machine ain't killing you, it's okay. Old farts, keep going.

2:06:47 - Paris Martineau
I mean this makes sense, because I think the way that a lot of people use technology is to connect with others, even if that's through, like reading social media. Anything that you know is more mentally stimulating than rotting alone in a room while talking to no one is certainly going to have a mental health wise, because that's unfortunately how a lot of people in later stage of life end up, and it's certainly that's gonna be detrimental to anyone's mental health, regardless of their age.

2:07:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, my mom is in what they call memory care, which is a floor dedicated to people who are with Alzheimer's later stage Alzheimer's and one of the things they do is they all get together and they have little memory classes where they remember I I last time I visited, they were remembering their childhood pets and they all just talk about it and it's great. It's a uh, I think it's very helpful.

It's just having conversations, it's having connections in the real world. Yeah, it's that kind of thing. Have you been following the meta antitrust trial which kicked off, uh, monday? Barely, yeah, I'm not all that interested um three days of zuckerberg testimony that's, that's tough a lot of emails. I'm not not. They say they're smoking guns. I don't know. He's certainly worried about any trust litigation. They've proven that.

2:08:11 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think it's also interesting to see evidence of what we've known for a while from, you know, third-party journalistic reports, just that Mark Zuckerberg has long been incredibly uncomfortable with the popularity of Instagram versus Facebook.

2:08:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, but he's very worried about TikTok. He says Right, but he's very worried about TikTok.

2:08:30 - Paris Martineau
He says Right, I mean yeah, even that's. Then the cycle continues where it's suddenly like well, you got Instagram, but TikTok ah.

2:08:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and of course, the government's trying to build a case that Facebook bought Instagram to keep it from destroying Facebook or from becoming a serious competitive threat to facebook. So they're surfacing a lot of emails from mark zuckerberg saying, you know, for instance, in 2012, uh, the success of instagram and path, which is a now defunct social networking app, uh could be very disruptive to us. In his words, um, he also testified that buying instagram, taking it off the market and building their own version of it was a reasonable thing to do. It is, of course it is. It's a very good defensive move. Is it legal?

2:09:32 - Jeff Jarvis
a very good defensive move. Is it legal? That's another matter. That's another matter. Well, so he also was trying to his best to get out of this trial to negotiate something, and that didn't work yeah, it's interesting because, as much as he is kissed up to the president, it's pretty clear trump does not like facebook.

2:09:47 - Leo Laporte
Uh, his animosity stemming back to January 7th, when Facebook, along with Twitter and Instagram, banned his accounts competing with them yeah, and now he's competing with him, isn't he? Mm-hmm? Well, I will continue to watch it. It's interesting if the judge, james Boasberg, is also involved in a number of other Trump administration trials, so he's a busy judge, I don't know. What do you think? Should Facebook be forced to sell Instagram? What does that accomplish? Their point?

and I think it's well taken is hey, you, let us do it way back then. If you didn't like it, you should have stopped it then.

2:10:33 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think it'll be surprising if we see a large antitrust move under this administration, given the coziness of people in this administration and tech executives. It seems like it was fairly obvious during kind of the inaugural period for Trump that executives at companies like Meta from Meta to Google to TikTok were being extremely cozy with the Trump administration and making sure to donate to the inaugural fund and it seemed that in a way they were kind of expecting some sort of return for that. I would be surprised if, at the first instance, that they suffer a loss. But also it's complicated because some of the recent appointments in the Trump administration have been people who say they are antagonistic towards quote unquote big tech. But at the same time you have many of those people who say the others say something completely different, um, when they're in office or when they're asked directly about these companies.

2:11:43 - Leo Laporte
So I think it could kind of be any anyone's game the ftc claims facebook has a monopoly in the personal social networking market, which they define as four platforms meta, uh, you know facebook, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat and, uh, a smaller app I've never heard of called me we that's it.

2:12:07 - Jeff Jarvis
I've heard of it.

2:12:08 - Leo Laporte
That's it. Um zuckerberg said yeah, we kind of turned away from friends and family towards a more of a broad discovery entertainment space. I think that's probably true. In fact, we found out that at one point, facebook even contemplated deleting all of your friends. So that you'd have to yeah, so you'd have to start I remember that actually.

2:12:29 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, there was talk about that yeah, they did something new though I I noticed this earlier. Uh, today in the facebook messenger app on on iphone, there's now a friends button which gives you like a feed, like a twitter feed, of your friends stuff yeah, that's a new thing they're trying out and, by the way, they're not the only ones open.

2:12:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Ai is also creating a social network it's uh real, or is this two fingers in the eye of um?

2:12:56 - Leo Laporte
you think it's against elon, it's just, it's just one. I mean they don't mention, they don't say twitter is a competitor.

2:13:04 - Paris Martineau
They don't say that tiktok is a competitor, even though instagram is completely designed to look like tiktok I mean, I think a long-standing component of the way that the various meta brands operate is they slowly but surely, uh grow to contain the features of every competing social network, regardless of whether they really work within the app they end up. You know, I always think about if you look at the sidebar on Facebook, there's like 75 things there and I'm sure 71 of which none of us have ever used or haven't thought about in years. I think they kind of take a grab bag approach often to product design and integration and that's how you end up with strange products like whatever's going on in Facebook Messenger right now.

2:13:57 - Leo Laporte
The judge has not been completely open to the FTC's case. He dismissed their initial case in 2021. You'll remember saying you didn't offer any indication of the metrics or methods you use to calculate Facebook's market share, but he did give him the chance to go back and try again, and that's what we're seeing right now. This trial began in 2016 under the first Trump administration, so this has been going on for quite some time. Administration. So this is this has been going on for quite some time. Boasberg is also the judge in the effort to deport venezuelan immigrants to cicat, and president trump has caused for called for his impeachment. So I don't know how this is all going to work out. It is a bench trial, so the judge has final say. You know, it's just one thing after another, one amusement after another.

2:14:56 - Benito Gonzalez
Does he get to do like a creative sentence on Zuckerberg? If, like he loses? Is that a thing he could do? A creative sentence, yeah you know, if he's the sole judge, yeah, he can do anything he wants.

2:15:07 - Leo Laporte
There'll be two phases. There'll be a determination phase and then, as we've seen with Google, google lost in that first phase, but now the judges has to determine what the penalty will be, what the remedy will be, and that would be the same thing, I think, with this can it be first the judge has determined. If it is hawaii, just no, I think it'd be more like you have to sell instagram and whatsapp. Uh oh, new models. New models just in from open ai. Yep, oh three, what OpenAI.

2:15:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Yep O3. What Well, it has the O in front of it, Leo, you see. So that's different.

2:15:42 - Leo Laporte
O3. Okay, o3 and O4 Mini. O3 is its most advanced reasoning model, yet While it shows strong performance in coding, math and science tasks, o4 Mini is a low-cost alternative that delivers impressive results across those same fields. Web browsing and image generation are also available. The company says this capability allows 03 and 04 Mini to solve challenging multi-step problems more effectively and take real steps toward acting independently. They can see images, interpret and think about them in a way that extends their visual processing capabilities. You can upload, for instance, pictures of a whiteboard or diagrams or sketches, and the models will understand them. They can also adjust the images. Oh, I can't wait to play with it. There's a new coding agent called Code from OpenAI, called Codex CLI. It's a command line interface that coders can use. Works with 03 and 04 mini.

Allman did say they were going to have a lot of releases this week. He says they're moving forward with these little new little releases, but the for a bunch of reasons, but the most exciting one is we are going to be able to make chat gpt5 much better than we originally thought. Okay, I even I am getting a little tired of the hype here. Okay, even I am getting a little tired of the hype here.

2:17:25 - Jeff Jarvis
More models. Yeah, I get bored by models. Just another model.

2:17:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, do we have to try every one of them?

2:17:32 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh boy, yeah, this is like features on phones, right, like oh look, there's a new screen now. Oh look, it's really clear.

2:17:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I think that's where we are now.

2:17:44 - Web
You're muted, it's. It's like being oh, we're at 18.1. Now who cares?

2:17:47 - Leo Laporte
like as far as the phone operating system, all right cool, all right, all right, I think we can take a break and get to our uh pics of the week in just a moment. If you would agree, then we shall move on. So say we all models more no, let's not, let's not.

Uh, you're watching intelligent machines, jeff jarvis, paris martineau. Uh, we have some great stuff coming up in the club. I wanted to give you a little heads up tonight. Micah's crafting corner. He is building more lego succulents. You don't have to be doing lego, you can do any kind of craft knitting, crocheting, painting, coding, whatever you want to do. Just bring your curiosity and your kindness, says micah tonight, 6 pm pacific, 9 pm eastern there are no bad crafts there are no bad crafts, just bad crafts people.

No, no, not even that. Uh, coffee time on friday uh, mark prince, our coffee geek, will be bringing liz happy beans, who is a coffee youtuber. That should be a lot of fun. We'll talk specialty coffees, 1 pm. Pacific friday uh, april 18th, that's 4 pm. Eastern 2000, utc. And of course there's the ai user group. On the fourth friday next week there's the um regular stacy's book club. That's going to be may 16th next month, and we are going to start doing keynotes in the club only so that we avoid the lawyer's wrath. Apple's WWDC keynote will be June 9th, but also Microsoft's Build keynote and Google's IO keynote, and in fact you guys are invited to join me for Google IO.

2:19:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I will be delighted to do that. Yeah, well, I'll let you know when?

2:19:33 - Leo Laporte
that is as soon as we find out. I don't know. Do we know I?

2:19:36 - Jeff Jarvis
don't think so. I think we know the date.

2:19:40 - Leo Laporte
May, it's sometime, yeah, so I'll let you know. And uh, yeah, we're going to do them in the club. So this is my pitch to join club twit. If you're not already a member, I've got one more pitch for you right now seven dollars a month, 84 a year. Yes, we brought back the annual plan, but I think prices are going to go up in the next few months, so. But here's my promise If you are already a member, they won't go up for you.

2:20:02 - Jeff Jarvis
So you can lock in. You brought back the annual plan Cause that is a sign of optimism, people.

2:20:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, cause every time somebody signs up, it means I have to go another year. Yeah, so keep signing up.

2:20:12 - Paris Martineau
Force them to keep working forever. You can do it you can do it.

2:20:24 - Leo Laporte
You can make me work forever, okay? Uh, thursday, may 20th, at 10 am. Uh, says anthony for google, I o so put that down. I'm doing that, right, put that down. And if you're coming out, we could come out and report back, or something like that. Uh, if you are not yet a club member, please we'd love to have you get access to the discord ad, free versions of all the shows again just seven bucks a month. And if prices do go up, as they may, depending on the economy and so forth, but it's not looking great. Uh, if they do go up, good news you will be locked in at the current price, so that's why you should sign up today. Twittv slash club twit. How about some pics of the week? How do you feel about some pics of the week? What do you?

say jeff, you've had a whole bunch of time. Okay, come up with something for us here.

2:21:10 - Jeff Jarvis
I got a few, so let's see here first paris are you in global entry when you came back?

2:21:15 - Paris Martineau
I am, yeah the.

2:21:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Thing that they just-.

2:21:19 - Paris Martineau
It's particularly crazy now because it used to be you'd have to come up, scan your passport and then like tap a thing to take a photo. Now you just walk up to a kiosk, stand still for one second and then they're like go. I didn't talk to a single person to enter the country.

2:21:35 - Leo Laporte
You didn't even talk to anybody. No, nothing was printed out.

2:21:40 - Paris Martineau
I just put you in airport jail and asked to look at the contents of your phone or anything I will say I did uh specifically take face id off my phone and turn my phone off before I got to the kiosk part.

2:21:50 - Jeff Jarvis
But yeah, I didn't need to so soon enough. And the same when I'm when I'm going through tsa now, um, just stare at the photo and go on I don't do that, though maybe that's the light in me, I don't I mean you say no, you can't have my picture I say I just prefer to scan my id second

2:22:12 - Paris Martineau
listen. I think that it's important. If I want, I intellectually, morally think that we should always have the option to not rely on face ID services. And so in situations where it's not an impediment to me, such as having to wait in a 75 person line to go to the passport kiosk thing, I'll always say please, let me scan. Like even whenever I was getting on my flight back from Amsterdam, they wanted everybody to do the face id thing instead of scanning your boarding pass and I was like, could I please just get my boarding pass? And they were like sure they have.

2:22:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's good to know that there's no pushback there used to be.

2:22:50 - Jeff Jarvis
You may not be traveling soon, paris, because, according to the guardian, boarding passes and check-in will be scrapped in favor of facial recognition.

2:22:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this sounds like a terrible idea.

2:23:01 - Paris Martineau
What about people who aren't white? How is that going to work for them?

2:23:05 - Jeff Jarvis
This is the international, you think they care about that, come on. Yeah, international Civil Aviation Organization, a UN body responsible for airline policy, plans to shake this up so it ain't just crazy Americans Within three years.

2:23:22 - Leo Laporte
Is this to solve a?

2:23:24 - Jeff Jarvis
problem, I think it's to get rid of a whole bureaucratic end of things. In a way, when you come in to the airport, they'll know you're there because of your face and say okay, you're in, you know you're fine. Wow, no chicken, all right, that's one story. My other for the week have you been to papa's to try their new pickle menu?

2:23:49 - Leo Laporte
no, I like their chicken. I don't go there very often so you can.

2:23:53 - Jeff Jarvis
You can look at the story. You can also see a taste test. That occurs in the video right below.

2:23:57 - Leo Laporte
It are they fried pickles. What are they?

2:23:59 - Jeff Jarvis
well, they have lots of things. They have a fried it's not an april fool's joke. They have a pickled uh uh marinated chicken sandwich. Oh, that sounds. They have fried pickles.

2:24:09 - Paris Martineau
Yes, they have pickle lemonade okay, I don't know how I feel about that uh, they have pickled glazed wings and a pickle glazed sandwich.

2:24:21 - Leo Laporte
Was it just to put dill in everything?

2:24:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Kind of. So I went this week for the good of the show. You know I try to find out these things. I do reporting trips. So I went down and I had because during Lent you can get the fish sandwich which I actually like there and so I got my fish sandwich, I got my rice and beans, and then I tried the fried pickles. They were good. They were good.

2:24:42 - Leo Laporte
I mean fried pickles are a perfect food. The reviewer on Delish, amanda Mactus. The only thing she wouldn't order again is pickle lemonade.

2:24:50 - Jeff Jarvis
That's the thing I'm not sure about. So I have a video of a guy who was trying it right below.

2:24:54 - Leo Laporte
She says it.

2:25:01 - Paris Martineau
She says it's a bit too briny and makes me kind of want a shot of whiskey.

2:25:03 - Leo Laporte
I mean, a pickleback is a fantastic beverage what there's such a thing as a pickleback Did you guys not know what a pickleback is no.

2:25:08 - Paris Martineau
It's when you take a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice, and it's the perfect chaser for a shot of whiskey.

2:25:15 - Leo Laporte
I never tried that.

2:25:16 - Paris Martineau
It was allegedly invented in a bar called the bushwick country club, conveniently not in bushwick. It's in uh williamsburg and it's a dive bar, but it's a fantastic way to consume alcohol if you're into that sort of thing well, now, this taste test is by a good friend well, a friend anyway, uh and a man I hugely admire, kenji alt lopez.

2:25:39 - Leo Laporte
Alt, he says I tried everything on the new pickle menu. Here's my thoughts. Now he's one of the great chefs at serious eats.

2:25:45 - Jeff Jarvis
I am down here, yeah you can fall, you can fast forward a bit, because uh fried chicken place, I came, I, I, I do all his recipes.

2:25:52 - Leo Laporte
He's the king of sous vide. We even did a, we even did a piece on him on the old screensaver you gotta grab the thing you're.

2:25:59 - Jeff Jarvis
You're bad at scrolling either way, vertically or horizontally. What do I do? That's? My hand okay now, where should I?

2:26:05 - Leo Laporte
okay, he's gonna taste it, that is so I think that is crag.

2:26:09 - Web
Do them that. Then they toss with some kind of pickle flavored. Uh he even has the pickle?

2:26:17 - Paris Martineau
yeah, pickle flavored sauce, that's not pickled flavored sauce sounds great actually, I love pickles, pickles are a big I'm on a big corny sean he likes, I'm a corny sean guy the crunch and the freshness beyond just the flavor.

2:26:34 - Web
I also thought I mentioned that, oh, look, look at those.

2:26:38 - Leo Laporte
Look at those nuts. That's got to be bad for you, though.

2:26:42 - Paris Martineau
Oh, certainly.

2:26:45 - Leo Laporte
None of this is good for you.

2:26:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, okay, now he gets to the lemonade at the end.

2:26:49 - Leo Laporte
He does.

2:26:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, how do I get there? Drag the dot, is that it?

2:26:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you see Okay, dragging the dot. Okay, we're right at the end. Now, where was it? Oh, what happened?

2:27:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Now what happened, kenji? I know you had it, maybe he got censored by Big Dil.

2:27:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh well, now I really have a hankering to go to Popeye's. Do you have a Popeye's there?

2:27:17 - Jeff Jarvis
You could have gotten this episode sponsored. Well, we tried to do that years ago with you.

2:27:19 - Paris Martineau
Have a popeyes there in the episode sponsored.

2:27:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, we would try to do that years ago with oh no, it's in the middle, it's 403. Um, we try to do that with uh chipotle, and we talked about it all the time and they never did the damn thing wow, but that was before the big e-coli outbreak, oh God.

2:27:39 - Paris Martineau
It's not going to happen.

2:27:41 - Leo Laporte
I clicked something wrong. I'm not a maven. I got to say I'm not a maven of user interfaces.

2:27:52 - Jeff Jarvis
But Kenji's the real deal, right.

2:27:54 - Leo Laporte
I love Kenji I always call him Alt Lopez, so let me drag the what number where 403. 403.

2:28:04 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a long taste here we go.

2:28:08 - Web
Wow, it tastes like lemonade, has a little bit more body than a normal lemonade does and it has some distinct sort of dill flavor Not overpoweringly dill, but a little bit of dill, a little bit of saltiness. Salty lemonade's not a bad idea. It tastes like if you've been to Turkey and you've been to a pickle shop in Turkey and what you'll do is you'll eat a bunch of pickles and then afterwards you will sometimes take a shot of pickle brine. There you go. Oh my god, it reminds me of like, and you can even get it with like, a little bit of lemon squeeze in it. It reminds me of that, but if it's sweeter, more refreshing not necessarily more refreshing, cause that's pretty refreshing but if it's sweeter and milder, it's like beginners pickled brine, you know beginners pickle brine.

2:28:51 - Paris Martineau
Ladies and gentlemen, that's you know pickle shop and take a. Take a cheese pickle juice.

2:28:58 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of like that turkish pickle shop. All right, paris martineau, what's your pick of the week?

2:29:05 - Paris Martineau
my pick of the week is uh. Last week, uh, one of my favorite shows on dropout tv came back with one of my favorite uh seasons.

The show called game changer, um, where it's kind of a game show where the game changes every show, and this season is already off to a insane start it looks insane their first episode is a concept called one year later, where a year ago they invited three comedians on stage, handed them folders full of tasks and said you have one year to complete this. And then came back and it's three comedians going perhaps harder than you've ever seen before at trying to win points for tasks. For instance, I have an example that's um in there of they um did one. Um. One of the tasks was uh dude like, make the strangest joke. Who can get the silliest vanity license plate? And a man uh decided to literally joker fi his car uh, okay, is it in here in the trailer?

um. It's in the link below that okay, oh all, oh, all right.

2:30:17 - Leo Laporte
So this is on Dropout, which you subscribe to. Because you love it so much, I subscribe to.

2:30:21 - Paris Martineau
It's a great. It's pretty cheap. I think it's less than like definitely less than $10 a month. I feel like it's maybe like five or six and it's really worthwhile. I don't know if you like comedy. It's kind of like the new Whose Line Is In Any Way.

2:30:41 - Leo Laporte
Which I line is in any way um, which I love, really interesting joker.

2:30:43 - Web
I'm the joker I got for his actual imda jkr I thought if I brought the whole car into it it would be really clear.

2:30:47 - Paris Martineau
So if we could zoom out and, uh, show the vehicle itself this is his actual car that he had to drive for six months. Driving around in this for four months it's got.

2:30:55 - Leo Laporte
Ha ha ha, painted, painted on it guys in westwood.

2:31:01 - Web
I sent them a picture of a toy joker car and they said yeah, we could do that on your civic hybrid with 110 000 okay, that's commitment.

2:31:12 - Paris Martineau
So it's really you know, if you want to see improv comedians go as hard as they possibly can for a bit. That has somewhat ruined their lives for the last year. It's a really good first episode for a I don't know great show that I like.

2:31:27 - Leo Laporte
Very nice. Game Changers is the show and Dropout is the network. Dropouttv yeah.

2:31:33 - Paris Martineau
They emerged from being a. They were previously kind of an offshoot of college humor, right, and the one of their creative leads. They dropped out and they've become a really profitable streaming company and are doing really cool things with it now.

2:31:51 - Leo Laporte
With such great shows as Titan Takedown, A Bird in the Hand and Dimension 20. As you see, Four Pills by Cameron Espositoito is it all? Comedy all the time yeah, basically.

2:32:04 - Paris Martineau
So I mean kind of their flagship shows are dungeons and drag queens I could watch they do.

Yes, so they do. Um, they have like a live dnd show called dimension 20, where they do different partners. One of them, uh, they partnered with drag queens to kind of have them be doing D&D. Right now, the Titan Takedown. They have people from WWE that are kind of doing a wrestling-themed D&D. They also have Game Changer, which is kind of a game show, something called Make Some Noise. That is basically like Whose Line Is it Anyway? And they've started doing stand-up comedy now too.

2:32:38 - Leo Laporte
Fantastic line is anyway and they do they've started doing stand-up comedy now too fantastic. Okay, that's a good pick. We're so glad to have you both together. The whole gang together nobody's going anywhere anytime soon.

2:32:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Right correct better, not I had the action figures made just for you. Copenhagen in a week, but I decided not to. Nikita's going to be there, but I'm not going to be. Oh, stay home, finish my book finish.

2:33:03 - Leo Laporte
Which book is this now?

this is the linotype book called hot type we do intelligent machines every wednesday, 2 pm pacific, 5 pm eastern, 2100, utc. You can watch us live on not on not two, but eight, if eight, different platforms. There's discord for the club twit members, there's tick, tock, there's x, there's facebook, there's linkedin, there's kick and there's others sleepy, dopey and grumpy many more. Oh, youtube and twitch. I almost forgot. Um, do watch us live if you wish. If you do, you can chat with us live, but if you don't, of course, you can watch at any time by downloading a copy of the show, audio and video, uh, available at twittv slash. I am.

There's a youtube channel dedicated to intelligent machines. You can use that to share clips if you want. It's a great way to do that or subscribe to your favorite in your favorite podcast player. And if you do subscribe, please leave us a five-star review, because it's a new show with a new name. We want everybody to know how great it is. If you like the show, leave a five-star review. Intelligent machines subscribe today. Thank you everybody for being here. We will see you do. We know benito, who's our guest next week uh, let me see we, it must be here, Harper.

2:34:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Reed.

2:34:23 - Leo Laporte
Ah, my old friend Harper Reed's going to talk about vibe coding. He uses AI Actually, it's not vibe coding, but he's a coder and he uses AI as a partner and he wrote a very good blog piece on how he uses AI to do coding. So we'll get an update on AI coding with Harper Reed, who's quite a character. I think you'll enjoy him Next week. Unintelligent Machines Until then, stay intelligent. I don't know, Stay machines.

2:34:54 - Web
Stay a human being. I'm not a human being, not into this animal scene. I'm an a human being, not into this animal scene. I'm an intelligent machine.