Intelligent Machines 819 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

0:00:01 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Intelligent Machines. Jeff Jarvis is here, paris Martineau is as well, and I think I am going to lose my mind. Our guests this week, emily Bender and Alex Hanna, have written a book called the AI Con. They say it's all a con. It's all terrible. I'm going to go crazy. We'll talk to them in a minute on Intelligent Machines Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is intelligent machines, episode 819, recorded wednesday, may 14th 2025. Put the fries in the bag. Hey, it's time for intelligent machines, the show we talk about the latest in the bag. Hey, it's time for Intelligent Machines the show where we talk about the latest in AI, robotics and all those smart things all over your house, everywhere you go nowadays. Paris Martin is here. It's great to see you. Paris, great to be here. Journalistic paragon of virtue, tech journalist and investigative reporter. You can send her her tips at parisnyc. It's great to see you. We were talking about kitty cats before the show began.

0:01:11 - Paris Martineau
We were and have a new one. I could talk about them forever I get a small let me brush her teeth today and I feel very accomplished.

0:01:19 - Leo Laporte
I was not a cat person. Uh, and then I and then I married lisa and now I'm a cat person had no choice.

0:01:25 - Paris Martineau
They're just like more flexible dogs. Sorry, we can continue.

0:01:28 - Leo Laporte
They're better than dogs. Oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble. Oh, you're going to get, oh boy, so much trouble. They're a lot less work. Let's put it that way.

0:01:37 - Emily M. Bender
You get a lot less exercise.

0:01:38 - Leo Laporte
They don't love you as much Dogs really love you. Cats will tolerate you. They always say that what is it? Dogs?

0:01:54 - Jeff Jarvis
have. I can't remember what it is, Are you okay? They always say it, but he doesn't.

0:01:58 - Leo Laporte
They always say it, but I don't say it, so I don't know what it is. That's Jeff Jarvis. He's Professor Emeritus of Journalistic Innovation at the craig newmark graduate school of journalism at the city university of new york. Uh, currently at montclair state university and suny study book.

0:02:15 - Paris Martineau
Hello, jeff now, leo, did you not hear the call of the people last week?

0:02:21 - Leo Laporte
I did not heed the call of the people. I heard it, but I heeded it not. Wow, I don't want that darn craig newmark jingle no more I love craig, but we don't need to. You're not even there anymore.

You're no longer there. So our guests this week we've got the best guests. I'm very excited emily bender, who is one of the authors of the very famous, oft-quoted Stochastic Parrots paper on the dangers of Stochastic Parrots. And Alex Hanna, who is a director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. They are the authors of a new book, and that's what Jeff's holding up. I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy this conversation the AI Con how to Fight tech's big hype and create the future we want. So I'm going to let you take the lead on this one while I stew in the corner.

Well, we'll see Anyway they're going to be about 45 minutes and we will talk with Alex and Emily. I'm very excited about that. I think you're friends with Emily. I'm very excited about that. You're you're, I think you, friends with.

0:03:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Emily, am I right or is that wrong? No, no, ok, I mean, I'm, I'm social social media, you arrange, you arrange this nice conversation.

0:03:36 - Leo Laporte
So so that means, unlike previous episodes of Intelligent Machines, we could start by talking about the AI news and then we'll get to our guests in about 45 minutes. Start by talking about the ai news and then we'll get to our guests in about 45 minutes. Um, but I am, I am, I am a wealth of stories. The copyright office this is an interesting story. The librarian of congress, who is really, more reasonably, the head of the copyright office, came out with their third installment of their report on ai, and one of the things uh, shira palmutter uh did, uh as uh, the library, she was the librarian of congress, right?

0:04:19 - Jeff Jarvis
there's a librarian of congress and then reports to reports to the library of congress.

0:04:24 - Leo Laporte
so two people were OK, the pre-publication version of this said that there are some issues about AI training itself on copyrighted works. It was their opinion that that was not fair use, which, of course, is the position that Sam Altman and Elon Musk and a lot of other AI people and Jeff Jarvis and you, jeff, and Kathy Gellis the right to read right, right. The librarian of Congress said, yeah, well, maybe not. At which point she was fired.

0:05:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Both of them. Again, both of them were theretto congress and the head of the copyright office. Libretto congress has other, many other duties as well yes, but but they're.

0:05:14 - Leo Laporte
But one of their chief duties is is, is, you know, kind of defending copyright. Um, it's interesting because kathy did write a piece monday in tech dirt saying the copyright office issues a largely disappointing report on ai training and once again a major fair use analysis inexplicably ignores the first amendment. We should probably get kathy on to talk about this. But she's always defended the right to read and says well, look, ai has the right to read, just like you would do making the show that. Do make it in the show.

0:05:46 - Jeff Jarvis
That's how we make the show and they're doing something similar.

0:05:49 - Leo Laporte
They're ingesting somebody's writing.

0:05:57 - Paris Martineau
I once again disagree that AI should have the same rights that people do.

0:06:00 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't think that a company, that a tool made by for-profit and arguably marginally non-profit companies, should have the same rights so time inc shouldn't be able to do what it did in its entire life since 1926 of reading other publications and rewriting them. That was timing the company time inc.

0:06:19 - Paris Martineau
The company did not read anything. The journalists employed by time inc did, and they were paid money in salaries to rewrite each other's people's work.

0:06:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let me read what kathy wrote in tector, because this is an interesting slant on this. Uh, she says allowing a copyright to bar ai training would interfere with the first amendment's protection of the right to read, and this is why she says this If people are free to read directly which they are right then they should be able to use tools like crawlers and bots to help them do their reading. I mean, I guess you could even say a browser is a tool that you use to read the original material In the earliest days of the web, there was controversy about if you were using a browser.

0:07:08 - Jeff Jarvis
that content was copied onto your computer and was thus a violation of copyright, and the media industry, for a brief moment, tried to insist that.

0:07:18 - Leo Laporte
So she says if you're not free to do that, then are you really free to read at all, which the First Amendment says you are right. So this is I. I agree it's complicated and I understand what you're saying, paris, especially since you are. You have a dog in this hunt. You are a writer and your stuff is presumably ingested by ai and then regurgitated to people like me who use ais for searching instead of reading the original material. Uh, so I understand why you'd be a little, can I tell you?

0:07:48 - Jeff Jarvis
a a brief, personal, relevant story. So, uh, last week I recorded the audio book of magazine coming out very soon and I go through the whole thing and at the end there's the this is magazine read for you by the author, Jeff Jarvis, right, and then I had to read the copyright stuff copyright 2024 by jeff. And then the next line was no portion of this book may be used in any training of artificial and I said you had to read it well, I said uh, I I don't want to read that.

And the guy, the engineer, said you got to read that, and so I, I, I read it. Then I read no wait then I read another version of it, which, which I said, though the author disagrees no portion of this book.

0:08:33 - Leo Laporte
And then wait a minute. Is the copyright yours or the publishers?

0:08:37 - Jeff Jarvis
audiobook yeah I've licensed it to them. So I don't really, I mean I own it, but I license it to them. So, um, I then wrote the very nice audiobook guy and I said, okay, three choices. One don't really, I mean I own it, but I license it to them. So, um, I then wrote the very nice audiobook guy and I said, okay, three choices. One don't do that for this book. Two use my joke. Three use somebody else's voice. I said I testified before the damn senate saying the opposite thing. I don't want this coming out of my lyrics.

And they said, okay, three, good they're not using your voice for that part, for that line, they will substitute that line. So instead it'll be. It'll be, you know.

0:09:10 - Paris Martineau
I would double check that.

0:09:12 - Jeff Jarvis
I'll do it.

0:09:13 - Paris Martineau
A portion of this may be used, you should do it.

0:09:15 - Leo Laporte
Paris. That nitwit Jeff's doesn't like this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Um, kathy says, without fair use. By the way, fair use is is really under assault. For instance, you know we can no longer stream our uh. What we used to do for years, for decades, we used to watch the Apple event together and talk about it, commentate on it. It was my feeling that this was fair use because we were commenting on it. We were making a new version of this streaming thing and we even would say, out of respect to apple, and if you don't want our commentary, apple streaming this, you go watch the apple version of this. But apple made us take it down. They threatened our, our youtube, uh I think you would have won.

0:09:59 - Jeff Jarvis
You couldn't afford to do it. I think you would have won in court. I think if anybody would take yeah, I mean it's obviously just an automated system that is flagging it.

0:10:06 - Paris Martineau
It's no one.

0:10:06 - Leo Laporte
An actual lawyer, no, no, I'm sure, I'm sure no, it wasn't a d, it wasn't a content id takedown. An actual lawyer wrote us a letter and yeah, I mean, I'm just curious if no, no, it was an actual address, a real person no, let me finish.

0:10:24 - Paris Martineau
I'm curious if that lawyer, independent of anything, found your thing, typed that whole letter himself, or if it was an automated system that flagged you and 400 other people that were doing the apple things and just put your name in that and it just was a. It was an automated system, but with a lawyer's letterhead but that's a very different thing than we usually get.

0:10:48 - Leo Laporte
Normally we will get the automated system, the dmca takedown from youtube, which you can respond to.

0:10:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Blah, blah, blah apple has more money to pay more lawyers and buy more uh automatic in any event uh, you're right, I probably could have defended it, but I couldn't afford to defend it. So I, as a result, I wish somebody would take them to court well, we're no longer going to do that.

0:11:08 - Leo Laporte
We're going to do it in privately, in our discord.

0:11:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Um, that's the chilling effect, uh, so I'm a believer in well, if the one is a violation, I hate to tell you that's a violation too. They could still come after you, even if it's private. They just can't do a youtube takedown, right? If they wanted to sue you over this yeah, they could, and then I would defend it and then I would defend it.

0:11:28 - Leo Laporte
We'd have to, because we protected them in every way we could. Yeah, um, so we shall see. We shall see, um. In any event, the administration then fired the authors of that report because I'm sure Elon Musk immediately said to the White House hey, that's not OK, yo Grok, because he's very much, as as you are, in favor of the idea that I can ingest copyrighted material and that's fair use. Usually, you don't fire the person who wrote the report.

That's where the cds were in maybe you go to congress and say, hey, we need some clarification. That would be a good thing. Uh, kathy gallus a little hot under the collar about this. Uh, we've talked about this before, but that's, uh, that's where we stand right now.

0:12:20 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, I well, well, there's a next chapter. There's a next chapter. Yeah, I think you have it on your part and I do mine.

0:12:26 - Leo Laporte
So then there's a story that someone did here that oops, elon, this didn't work out quite the way you thought, oh yeah, I put that in too, because the person they replaced yes, the Librarian of Congress with is even worse.

0:12:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Because, because, the, the wing of the right wing hates big tech. Yeah, so they don't want to do anything. It's nice to be tech, yeah, elon, okay, you, but the rest of your neighbors are awful, and so they want to go after that. And I mean, while the left there's certainly a large contingent like paris martineau who wants to attack, uh, this issue from that side, and so it's interesting that both parties have splits in them on this topic.

0:13:06 - Leo Laporte
This is where we kind of stand right now, because the left doesn't like big tech for one reason. Right they're monopolistic, section 230, same thing. They're invading your privacy. The right doesn't like it because they're censoring conservative speech. But this makes an unholy alliance, because they have two different reasons for not liking big tech. But now you have unanimity whatever. For whatever reason, we don't like big tech, and I think you're right, jeff. I think it's time to maybe defend big tech against both attacks.

0:13:38 - Jeff Jarvis
It's also lobbyists against lobbyists. It's media lobbyists against tech lobbyists. Yeah, in this case.

0:13:45 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, the media lobbyists are loving this.

0:13:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh yeah, oh yeah. They're happy as can be.

0:13:50 - Leo Laporte
I feel like if it were just left up to us, we could figure something out here.

0:13:55 - Paris Martineau
Us three yeah.

0:13:57 - Leo Laporte
To the users.

0:13:58 - Paris Martineau
To the PAC policy, to us, to us, you know, yeah, I think probably the right solution is compensation.

0:14:04 - Leo Laporte
Just yeah, yeah, I think probably the right solution is compensation. Just exactly what OpenAI is doing.

0:14:07 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, no, I disagree with that. No, no, no, no. I disagree with that strongly, because OpenAI is not compensating for content. Openai is giving buckets of money to large companies to buy their silence in lobbying and legislation and litigation, and the vast part of the ecosystem of content and news is left out of that. It's only the big companies, the biggest, squeakiest wheels, that get some money to shut up, and that's what's happening and it's not benefiting news and content overall. It's not benefiting the vast majority of what is in fact ingested. So, no, I think that even that kind of payment routine is ridiculous.

0:14:45 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, so I guess we're. Then we are at a stalemate, we're at loggerheads, yes.

0:14:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Because Paris. I know what she's going to do. She's going to filibuster for a 24-hour episode of Intelligent Machine.

0:15:00 - Paris Martineau
That's what she's going to do, listen guys, I've got a lot of good ideas. She's gonna listen. Guys, I've got a lot of. I've got a lot of good ideas, um, one of which is I listen to a podcast that uh sometimes does these reads read through like old adventure game books, which are kind of like a choose your own adventure book, but for children, based on old video games, and I do think there are some very silly ones that we could uh read through and fail through over a couple of hours. That could take up a good three to four hour block when we're not playing Baldur's Gate 3 or Leo's not getting a tattoo.

0:15:30 - Leo Laporte
So the Trump appointees at this point have been blocked from entering the US copyright office.

0:15:37 - Paris Martineau
How many Trump appointees or Doge people have been blocked from entering US government offices? Because I feel like I see a version of this story every single day.

0:15:48 - Leo Laporte
So they're claiming that they are the new Librarian of Congress.

0:15:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there's another issue here, which is Congress, for once, isn't happy that somebody fired the Librarian of Congress.

0:15:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the two men are Brian Neves, who claims he's the new deputy librarian, and Paul Perkins, who says he's the new acting director of the Copyright Office as well as Acting Register. Department of Justice confirmed to Wired that Neves and Perkins had been appointed to lead the Copyright Office. Both are currently high-ranking officials at the DOJ. They declined to comment about whether the two officials attempted to enter the Copyright office on Monday. The White House has not responded to a request for comment. It's the Capitol Police that stopped him from coming in, by the way.

0:16:36 - Jeff Jarvis
On top of all this, though, is I wonder what power the copyright office actually has over this versus the courts. Fair use is something that Lawrence Lessig famously said from Harvard. That fair use is the right to hire an attorney to defend your use as fair use, and there's tons of case law on this, and I think it's going to be the courts that decide this, not this office. This office can issue a memo and a thought, but I think that's probably not the force of law right.

0:17:03 - Leo Laporte
So it's so complicated because last week they fired the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. That's where I get confused in all this.

0:17:10 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I was fully confused up until this moment.

0:17:13 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, she was the first woman, the first black woman, to hold the position she's responsible for appointing the copyright register, not the executive branch register, not the executive branch right. So, um, the there are those who say the White House does not have the power to remove the leader of the Copyright Office either. Um, this is what the legal Council for public knowledge said, meredith Rose, that that legal power does not exist. But that doesn't. That so far hasn't stopped anybody from anything. Um, the white house press secretary uh, told the wonderful carolyn levitt told reporters that hayden's firing stemmed from quote quite concerning things she had done in the library of congress in pursuit of dei. She is a black woman, so probably just being a black woman was sufficient for that. I don't know what a mess the thing is this stuff is. While it seems kind of geeky, it's somewhat important. At least it's important to me and it should be important to probably anybody who has a copyright or wants to read.

0:18:20 - Jeff Jarvis
It's important to academics and scholars too. Yeah, because they use common crawl. That's how we study. The internet is us, and how do we study the internet? But by crawling it, um, and at some point, um, you know the the self-interest in search. I think media companies at the beginning were going to fight search and they realized that'd be dumb.

0:18:41 - Leo Laporte
That's what people are going to find us, the top democrat on the uh committee that oversees the library of congress said on saturday, donald trump's termination of the register of copyrights. Sheriff perlmutter, that's the same. The register of copyrights is the same as the librarian of congress no, no, these are two different people.

0:18:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Leo, there's a librarian of congress who appoints the register of copyrights. Both I've been trying to tell you this both got fired. Both got fired, so one reports to the other termination of the register of copyrights. Both I've been trying to tell you this. Both got fired.

0:19:06 - Leo Laporte
Both got fired, so one reports to the other. Termination of the register of copyrights. Sheriff Perlmutter, perlmutter, that's a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It's surely no coincidence. He acted less than a day after she refused to rubber stamp Elon Musk's effort to mine troves of copyrighted data To train. Rubber stamp elon musk's effort to mine troves of copyrighted data to train ai models. Um, all right, so, uh boy, what a mess. Yeah, that's where we stand, and this is it's a mess.

It's a mess um, and depending on your point of view, uh to to my left. The person to my left says it's a good thing. To the person on my left says it's a good thing. To the person to my right says it's a bad thing.

0:19:47 - Paris Martineau
Such is the nature of a panel show. It would be uninteresting if we all agreed.

0:19:52 - Leo Laporte
We're rarely so balanced. Are you worried that Meta's new glasses reportedly will have face recognition built in what? Yes?

0:20:04 - Jeff Jarvis
So it can do things like what you do all day. Leo, this is your next uh.

0:20:07 - Paris Martineau
I need this I have paragnos here my question, though, is how many people that are using the meta glasses are actually using the camera function in a meaningful way, because every person I've seen and this is obviously limited sample size, but every person I've seen out in the real world using it are just like oh, I love having headphones that I don't have to put in my ears Like no one's out here using the cameras except for, like the occasional, I guess, instagram story, but wouldn't you use it more if it could do things like.

0:20:38 - Leo Laporte
Here comes Leo right. So I guess, according to I just got an article my daughter sent me from neuroscience news face blindness, which is what I have, and it is prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is affects one in 50 people the inability to recognize even close friends and family, despite having normal vision and memory. Face blindness now I know I can recognize friends and family, I even recognize you guys. But aphantasia.

0:21:10 - Jeff Jarvis
I put up a video on this story on this last week from quantum magazine. Why some people don't see mental imagery, that's a separate thing, but I think in my case these are related because, anyway, uh, I don't know, uh, so anyway, at least those people would be bent.

0:21:28 - Leo Laporte
Two percent of the population would definitely benefit from this. The concern, the reason google, for instance, decided not to do it, even though they had the capability in google glass, was they were worried that uh guys would use it to to stalk women. What's her name? Hey, cutie, hi, oh, and they will.

0:21:47 - Paris Martineau
Of course they will, especially because I mean as someone whose job is to find people's contact information online. If you're able to suddenly then just walk down the street, look at any cute girl or guy or person you want to suddenly know the address, phone number and email of. If a facial recognition thing could easily pull up their full name, then you'd be halfway there. Basically, you just need to then enter that information into a couple databases and you'd be able to figure out where anybody lives just if they walked by you.

0:22:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Companies working on two pairs of Meta is working on two pairs of smart glasses for next year, internally called Aperol and Bellini. Oh gosh, oh God, I'm waiting for martini myself.

0:22:36 - Leo Laporte
They have recently reworked the way they assess privacy issues. It used to be. It had to go up the ladder. Right Now, groups are able to self-certify Because hey gonna stop us, why wouldn't we to release products more quickly? Uh, in addition to face recognition, the software which you know will be built in the glasses could eventually do things like remind you to grab your keys if it noticed you didn't.

0:23:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, that was the demonstration we saw, watching all the time, where it's watching all the time. Well, this is your. This is what's the thing you wear, the what's it? It's just listening, but what's it called? I forget the b, the b right. So I think. I think this is where met is going yeah, I think it's great to both, both listen and watch. Well then, you can query it based on your own life.

0:23:24 - Leo Laporte
How useful for my little friend. Uh, you know that's always in my ear. Hey, you know, if the grocery list is on the toaster oven, you forgot to bring it with you as you go shopping. That would be great. I would love that. Meta is reportedly already testing the live ai on already released models, so even the existing ray-bans can do it, but it cuts the battery down to just half an hour that's it oh geez, so they're gonna get constantly recording and checking everything against what a surprise, because it doesn't do it on device either.

0:23:57 - Paris Martineau
It has to say so you know, a way to make this work is you just wear a full body uh battery suit, um, and there'll be no problems with that or wear corduroy pants and just save the static electricity and you're charging all the time.

0:24:14 - Jeff Jarvis
I got a question for you, leo, they're related to this with the b. If lisa says to you I told you that you say no, you didn't. Can you say b? Did lisa tell me this? I could, but I wouldn't are you nuts?

0:24:31 - Leo Laporte
don't think I haven't thought about that. All right, we're going to take a little break and remember our guests are coming up in about 20 minutes. We're going to have a very exciting guests, uh emily bender and alex hannah, whose new book is called the ai con, which might give you some idea of where they're going with that one yeah, paris is happy.

0:24:56 - Paris Martineau
I just let me just say it's got to get some fun balance in the show. I think it's fun to throw some stuff.

0:25:01 - Leo Laporte
I I think you have painted me as like this ai f just full speed ahead.

0:25:05 - Paris Martineau
You know, uh, leo you probably more than a dozen times in this podcast, have said as an ai, acceleration is all right.

0:25:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, I am but I just I, I don't look my eye. My point is I don't know if it's gonna, we're gonna get it or not. We may not. We may not get super intelligence or agi or any of that stuff. It may not be that useful, but it is surprisingly the three in the two or three years since chat, gpt, three, five. It's already pretty amazing what's happening, don't you agree? We're doing something's happening here. We wouldn't be doing a show about it if it if I didn't think it was really important. It may it's not gonna be a complete flop.

0:25:45 - Paris Martineau
It may not do everything that we hope I think I will be actually deeply impressed with ai if someone out there can use an ai tool to automatically cut all of leo's sweeping statements about ai from the podcast based in the transcript and put them in one super cut video anthony could probably do that.

0:26:03 - Leo Laporte
I know anthony could do that if it happens, then I'll.

0:26:06 - Paris Martineau
I'll be on your side, don't give any ideas.

0:26:08 - Leo Laporte
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0:29:31 - Paris Martineau
this is, this was the stupidest article oh, is this where the uh they judged him on his alpha ville just uh, yeah, it was just him on his choices I mean I it's not news, it's oh no, but it's hysterical.

0:29:48 - Leo Laporte
This is the financial times did an interview with sam allman. Uh, their their lunch with ft.

0:29:56 - Paris Martineau
He's using the basic d to c squeeze olive oil tube.

0:30:02 - Jeff Jarvis
They're getting to that.

0:30:03 - Leo Laporte
Yep, yep, you caught it right away. Paris, yep. So here's the video. There he is with the green bottle, okay, so explain this. First of all, number one he's bad at olive oil. That's Graza, which is a trendy brand of olive oils from southern Spain that are sold through whole foods and direct. Obviously, you've you've seen them before.

0:30:28 - Paris Martineau
It's basically an olive oil type that is found in what's called shoppy shops, which are like a store where you could get like a wiggly candle or like some fun perfume, or maybe it's a mismatch of thrifted goods.

0:30:45 - Leo Laporte
It's a favorite of the Instagram set. Yes, goods it's. It's a favorite of the instagram set.

0:30:47 - Paris Martineau
Yes yeah, it's a favorite of the instagram set. It's also the reason it's sold in plastic bottles, and maybe my information is that update. But part of my understanding of why people poo-poo, it is like you should be drinking your olive oil should be stored in dark colored uh glass rather than plastic. Uh, but part of the reason why they do plastic is because they have this squeezy bottle. Uh. Well, that I guess.

0:31:11 - Leo Laporte
Now and apparently sam altman doesn't understand, because there's two kinds of graza there's sizzle and there's drizzle. Yes, and sizzle is for cooking.

0:31:21 - Paris Martineau
Drizzle is for drizzling.

0:31:23 - Leo Laporte
Yes, because the drizzle is very expensive. First pressed evu early harvest. It is bright, is designed for dipping things in. It's expensive 21 for half a liter for early harvest. It even says finishing oil drizzle. No, but that's the green bottle.

0:31:44 - Jeff Jarvis
What is sam using to cook with shocking and what does it do to this wonderful, expensive olive oil?

0:31:50 - Leo Laporte
makes all the flavor out of it, since it heats heat. Yeah, heat deodorizes olive oil. But to make it even worse, he has both. He has sizzle and drizzle.

0:32:01 - Paris Martineau
There they are oh, I love alphabilla. This is a perfect blog post. Great the crop. And he has other oils in a squeeze tube as well yeah, yeah.

0:32:15 - Leo Laporte
A responsible cook, they say, would be frying and frizzle now let's get to the next device now, this I disagree with because I have I thought you might yeah, his coffee machine is horrors, a breville oracle touch which is a two thousand dollar I I don't have it anymore, but I had it top of the range model. Is that the one that ant has now? Yes, it's the one ant coveted.

Hey, ant, sorry, actually it's not cool no, wait a minute, didn't get the touch, he got one down from that. The touch ended up, uh, springing a leak. I gave it to anthony and he said it's not recoverable. So he and I both got the oracle jet. But anyway, that's not. So what, uh, what these? You say alphaville, it's in financial times. Is that their blog?

0:33:01 - Paris Martineau
alphaville is like a newsletter that the financial times has, that's like the fun section of the Financial Times. They're kind of like the intelligent machines of Twit of the FT.

0:33:14 - Leo Laporte
And that's why we're doing the story. So they say the Oracle Touch is semi-automatic, not fully automated. Bean-to-cup, meaning it walks the user through pulling and frothing techniques while automating repetitive stuff like grinding and tampering. The internet hates the Oracle touch, it gets.

0:33:31 - Jeff Jarvis
The internet uses some awful words.

0:33:32 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yes, Regularly on Reddit, where Altman was on the board for seven years, though you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence of his tenure. Anyway, it's perfectly good machine and made excellent coffee, and I and in fact ChatGPT says it is the top luxury pick for espresso makers. Crevel actually makes very, very good espresso makers.

0:33:56 - Paris Martineau
What would ChatGPT's response be for the top luxury pick for olive oil?

0:34:01 - Leo Laporte
Is it Grazer? Maybe Sizzle? Maybe Drizzle, I don't know.

0:34:03 - Paris Martineau
I'm shocked that he isn't getting a fancier olive oil, because I, even for my broob, tastes. I pick my olive oils from the new york's international olive oil competition and then choose the brands from there, from the world of you yeah, no, olive oil is important.

0:34:20 - Leo Laporte
Let's not uh, let's not stint on the olive oil. He did spend money on something that I refuse to, which is the Oracle Puck Sucker. So you know, after you make espresso, you got to knock the box. You know, you put your portafilter.

0:34:34 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I actually really I do respect this choice, because that's the most annoying part of having an espresso machine.

0:34:40 - Leo Laporte
So he didn't like that and so he bought the optional Breville Puck Sucker which automatically activated suction cup creates a rapid vacuum which quietly, quietly releases the espresso coffee puck in one swift action. It's 90. Okay, maybe he down. Mark him for that, the puck sucker. Maybe a bridge too far? Uh, there's something off with his knife. They say, oh, that's one fancy looking knife handle. Appears to be walnut or ironwood, no rivets, flat butt with a steel cap, useful for crushing 70 to 80 garlic cloves. Blaze santoku, the distinctive workhorse of japanese kitchens, with a bowed spine with the nose of a beluga whale bolster. Hey, wait a minute, there's a lot of nerdery, they write around knife handles. The japanese type is light and simple, putting the weight near the tip for intricate work. The german handle is heavier, so the knife bounces more towards the middle. Uh, typically japanese knives don't have a chunky finger protector between the handle and the heel, known as a bolster. Altman's knife definitely has a bolster and a full tang. Oh no, a full tang. A full tang. How dare he?

does it ting ting tang, walla, walla bing bang walla walla puck suck they Alphaville comes to the conclusion. We couldn't find an exact match online. Maybe it's a one-off piece by an artisan steel forger who shuns tradition, or it's a Chinese mass-produced blade that's sold under countless names usually in sets, often in a fancy presentation box with fake Damascus patterns etched on the side.

Presentation box with fake Damascus patterns etched on the side. There are Sino, nihon, germanic, franken knives all over Amazon and AliExpress that look a lot like Altman's. All we can say with confidence is it's either very expensive or very cheap. Also a second bottle of drizzle in the foreground he has two bottles of olive oil both open and going stale simultaneously, oh my god uh.

Well anyway, it's amazing what you can get out of a uh, of a sam altman at home video. I think it's pretty cool that he cooked for them, yeah, and he seemed confidently doing it, he and the pan was not shiny and new, so good good on you, sam he's. He's more like us than you think at people magazine.

0:37:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, the true cliche was that every celebrity shot, we had to do the whole, we had to do a home shot. That was required, yeah, and and they always had to be in the kitchen and they always, always made pasta because you just boil some water.

0:37:35 - Leo Laporte
What could possibly?

0:37:36 - Jeff Jarvis
go wrong uh okay, you want a fun little story that's quick. Yes, yeah, we got about 10 minutes for our guests. That's what I figured. This one's fun. So, oh hell, now I got to find it because I put up so much stuff.

0:37:53 - Leo Laporte
By the way, I just well, while you're looking, another story we probably should I want to make sure we do mention, as you know, right now we're getting the budget. You know, right now we're getting the budget. You know the really what do they call it? The big, grand, perfect bill. The House is in the midst of reconciliation and someone has snuck in into the budget reconciliation bill a law that prevents states from in any way interfering with AI for the next 10 years. Now, the way it defines this is artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems or, get ready for this, automated decision systems, which is any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics or artificial intelligence that issues a simplified output, including a score, classification or recommendation to materially influence or replace human decision making, which, as tech dirt is, mike masnick is quick to point out is pretty much every content moderation system ever created. So this law would preclude 99 of the state think of the children social media de-anonymization laws and a hundred percent of the attempts to regulate social media under defective products.

0:39:23 - Paris Martineau
Theories of action, action including the new COSA bill that was just announced including the new coast Well that's a federal bill.

0:39:31 - Leo Laporte
So, that's back in, yeah, but the States can't do anything, including some. There's some pretty crazy bills out there. The Missouri, missouri law and the rule we talked about Did we talk about that last week? The Missouri attorney general? I don't think so. Uh, who issued a rule? Let me see if I can find the uh, the deets for this one. I don't know if I put this in our. It wasn't a law, it's just a rule. Okay, um, here's his press release andrew bailey, attorney general, files groundbreaking rule to end big tech censorship monopoly and protect online free speech. Again, not a law. A rule that says big tech platforms must allow Missouri users to choose their own content. Moderators.

0:40:22 - Jeff Jarvis
I want Sally. I like Sally how she moderates for me.

0:40:26 - Paris Martineau
I have sally what I don't want anyone from the state of illinois.

0:40:33 - Leo Laporte
They don't have my best interests platforms according to this rule and I guess it's only in missouri must now provide a choice screen upon account activation. This would be, you know, facebook x, tiktok, blue sky, a choice screen and at regular intervals must put this choice screen back up, must not favor their own moderation tools and must allow full interoperability for outside moderators chosen by users I want to moderate my posts now.

Ironically, both mastodon and blue sky could, could kind of support this because they're federated, so you could go to whatever instance, uh, you preferred and get you know I moderate my instance differently than others moderate their instances, so I don't know if that would satisfy the Missouri law or sorry rule. The rule also prohibits social media companies from opposing unreasonable access restrictions on third-party content moderators, so you can essentially this is a free speech thing like well, if they're banning you know, attorney General Andrew Bailey, I'm going to choose a moderator that doesn't there is.

0:41:48 - Jeff Jarvis
This is. This is actually something that mike and, uh, daphne keller have argued from stanford that, uh, there should be the opportunity for moderation choice.

0:41:58 - Leo Laporte
It's actually not a bad idea no, in fact blue sky has that. Blue sky does the idea it's what you want.

0:42:03 - Jeff Jarvis
But but that also says how do you make money doing that? How do you support doing that, jeff? I'm not doing it for paris, yeah, you can. You can pick various uh moderation schemes what do you mean? I think, hold on here.

0:42:16 - Paris Martineau
I don't think you can pick, like what this is talking about, which is different groups to moderate. You're still being moderated by if you're on the blue sky social.

0:42:25 - Leo Laporte
You're right. Technically it probably does violate the rule, because blue sky also has a a supervening ability to say well, yeah, you may, you may have some opinions about this, but we're not going to allow Nazi content. But there are there are moderation engines built into it.

0:42:41 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, so right now I'm just I've selected blue skies moderation service.

0:42:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't see how there's an option for me to choose a different moderation, but there will be sure at some point there will be. It's a capability that's built in that way yeah, uh, this mark.

0:42:55 - Leo Laporte
Attorney general bailey says this rule marks the beginning of a sustained effort to dismantle the big brother speech control machinery of corporate america.

We're grateful for the new leaders in the white house who have reversed the biden administration's weaponization of big tech, building on our groundbreaking litigation that helped missouri blow the lid off the federal government's massive censorship conspiracy, we're continuing to charge to protect free speech and take back the digital public square. Of course, there's no way this is all grandstanding. There's no way this rule is enforced in any way or could be. No, okay, just thought I'd mention that. All right, I want to take a break because we got to well, go ahead. You had that one little thing.

0:43:40 - Jeff Jarvis
No, because we're going to go to the quick Line 78, real quick, okay, a great hack. So what's her name? Rita L Corey was on a flight and can't stand that. You've got to buy Wi-Fi. On a short flight Over the ocean okay, but a short flight ridiculous. But you can. On most airlines like the United you can get free messaging, not texting, but only in Apple or Google, right.

Yeah, you can use whatsapp or google messages, exactly, yeah. So she realized, oh, there's now gemini and google messages, right? So she went into google messages and then just started asking uh gemini for things, and gemini came back with current information and so it was almost like uh, surfing the web, wouldn't give pictures. She could feed a picture to it and ask for similar things. It wouldn't give a picture back because they blocked that.

0:44:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah I don't think they could stop this, though I mean this is just.

0:44:37 - Paris Martineau
I mean they don't right no, so I just thought it was really if I could get gemini to go through who I follow on Twitter and show me the tweets I normally pay the fifteen dollars and get the Wi-Fi for crying out loud. Yeah, I usually do.

0:44:52 - Leo Laporte
So, that was it. That was quick. We are going to get to our guests. Emily Bender and Alex Hanna are here. They're the authors of a brand new book, the AI Con, which Jeff Jeff Jarvis has how to fight big tech's hype machine, and, uh, that'll be just around the corner. But first, a word from our sponsor. We're so glad to have sponsors. We appreciate, of course, our club twit, but uh and and thank you for making all this uh possible for so long. But we also are very glad to have uh sponsors like OutSystems with us. We appreciate that. Thank you very much, outsystems.

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All right, we are so glad now to welcome our guests and actually, uh, some very prestigious guests. Uh, emily m bender is, uh, you may may know the name. I'm sure it rings a bell from the paper we quote all the time the danger of stochastic parrots. Uh, emily is also the co-author of the ai con how to fight big tech's hype and create the future we want. She's senior fellow at the center for uh, oh no, I'm sorry that's. I'm reading alex's now. She's a professor of linguistics at the university of washington and, uh, and I think the stuff you're doing with linguistics is fascinating, but but I don't know if we'll get time to talk about that either, but welcome, it's great to have you, emily.

0:47:50 - Emily M. Bender
Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing us on the show.

0:47:52 - Leo Laporte
Yay, alex Hanna is, of course, the co-author of the AICon, the director of the Distributed AI Research Institute, and with Emily, she hosts the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast. Do you sit in front of a screen and then make fun of AI videos? What is that?

0:48:11 - Alex Hanna
Oh, I wish we did it like that. I'm director of research, not director.

0:48:16 - Leo Laporte
I'm sorry director of research.

0:48:17 - Alex Hanna
That's my boss, no, but we don't do it. I mean it wouldn't make for good podcasting because it would just be the back of our heads. And. I really don't want anyone looking at the back of my head.

0:48:35 - Leo Laporte
So I am going to admit that I am a fan of AI.

0:48:40 - Paris Martineau
I think it's important to note that perhaps 25 minutes earlier in this show he's like. You know, people keep trying to paint me as a fan of AI and I think that's just perhaps a miscalculation, so you're misquoting me. I love AI.

0:48:56 - Leo Laporte
I love it. I use it all the time. I use it as a coding assistant, I use Claude Code, I use Perplexity for search. I'm very impressed with what great strides these machines and these tools have made. I also understand that there are issues. I've read your stochastic paper, for instance, emily, and I completely agree with it.

0:49:19 - Emily M. Bender
But is it a?

0:49:20 - Leo Laporte
con. Is it a con? Is it a con? You knocked your microphone off of you.

0:49:28 - Alex Hanna
Yeah, yeah, I heard, we heard, am I back? Am I back?

0:49:32 - Emily M. Bender
Okay, yes, so I was saying we've got a whole book for you.

0:49:35 - Leo Laporte
I see and.

0:49:36 - TikTok
I said it very quietly apparently.

0:49:39 - Jeff Jarvis
May I take the liberty of reading from your book for one second Sure Paid for Artificial intelligence, if we're being frank, is a con, italicized A bill of goods you are being sold to line someone's pocket. A few major, well-placed players are poised to accumulate significant wealth by extracting value from other people's creative work, personal data or labor, replacing quality services with artificial facsimiles. We call this type of con AI hype.

0:50:11 - Leo Laporte
You don't mean all. You don't mean all, you don't mean everything, do you?

0:50:15 - Emily M. Bender
Well, so the first thing that we do is we want you to disaggregate and that's what I was trying to say before when I muted myself is I'm glad that you named the specific things that you're using, because that was gonna be my first question what you mean by ai, it's not one thing. And you named, uh, claude for generating code and perplexity for information access. Um, and those are two specific applications, um, there's things I also pay for chat gpt.

0:50:39 - Leo Laporte
I pay for claude. I pay for microsoft copilot, I. I use them all, but that's part of my work. Now I should probably also warn you, because paris is going to out me if I don't. I also wear this b ai pin. This thing records everything, sends it to the iphone, it sends it to an unnamed ai, which the folks at b never really kind of explained what models they use, and then sends me back a summary of my day. That is incredibly sycophantic, but I enjoy it.

0:51:04 - Paris Martineau
But do you use that for anything?

0:51:06 - Alex Hanna
Yeah, it's like the. This was like the humane AI pin, right, it's not.

0:51:14 - Leo Laporte
That was a con, that was a con. Okay, well, I will stipulate that.

0:51:18 - Alex Hanna
Okay, but explain the difference to me. I mean, I frankly I don't know what the device you were holding, yeah, does so what this is is basically.

0:51:28 - Leo Laporte
It's a microphone that is connected uh to um my uh iphone, which then sends the audio recordings out for transcription named rosie and that's true by the way, this is it generates facts about. Look at that. It's true.

0:51:42 - Paris Martineau
It's true it records everything that he does or hears every day, then sends that to the cloud. Transcribes. It claims to get rid of all the recording away the audio. Then right keeps little facts about leo through that but then he has to go on his phone and be like yes, I do have a cat, a cat named.

0:52:04 - Leo Laporte
Rosie, can I read you my daily memory from yesterday? How about that?

0:52:09 - Paris Martineau
Was this your first time? You've looked at it since yesterday.

0:52:11 - Alex Hanna
Go ahead, and then I have a comment. If you want to throw up, Alex, please be my guest. I'm not going to throw up. This is great. No, I'm just kidding. So what's?

0:52:21 - Leo Laporte
his memory. Celebrating family bonds and new beginnings with laughter, tech talks and a cat named Rosie. Today was dynamic and engaging day for Leo. It's a little sycophantic, I try to turn that off Marked by a blend of personal interactions and professional commitments. The day began with lively celebrations of some birthdays, which I did not celebrate, where Leo showcased his humorous side among friends I don't know where it got that from.

0:52:48 - Paris Martineau
This is from were you podcasting yesterday?

0:52:51 - Leo Laporte
no, you know what it does. This is a flaw which I'm sure they will look. I only first of all if it's a con. I only paid fifty dollars for this once.

0:53:00 - Emily M. Bender
No subscription fifty dollars and all your privacy and all of the privacy of the people who you talk to when that's the really invasive thing.

0:53:08 - Paris Martineau
Yes, and do we want to mention what state you're in?

0:53:12 - Leo Laporte
I'm in a two-party state and a wait.

0:53:15 - Alex Hanna
Are you in california? Because I saw the thing that said that you're in. Are you in petaluma? Yeah, oh, okay, well, I saw that you're in petaluma, yeah you're in san francisco, right, I'm in the Bay area. I'm not going to say where I am, but you know, I care about my privacy.

But I guess what I, what I wanted to say, I mean this is Chris Gilliard has a, has a, has a statement. You know, as a term for this it's called luxury surveillance. Right, you're paying, you're? You're? You're giving these companies the privilege to follow you and track you. I'm paying them, I'm paying them. Yeah, you are paying them. I mean, you are doing that with your free will and your free dollars and you're doing it. But I mean, the thing about Lugsy's surveillance that Chris talks about that's so insidious, is that they're using this, it's you get to do this voluntarily, but they're also kind of testing it on you and then they're taking it to folks who are incarcerated and they have no choice about this. Right. I mean, this is a kind of this. And then I mean and then what Emily is saying, in addition to the people who are not consenting to this? I mean, is it hearing us?

0:54:29 - Leo Laporte
I mean we don't consent. Well, wait a minute you're on a podcast.

0:54:32 - Paris Martineau
Well, it doesn't. It can't hear us because we're in Leo's headphones. It actually doesn't, but other people do hear us. Okay, but I.

0:54:40 - Leo Laporte
I do want to recognize that I can do this at a privilege. I'm a. I'm a yeah cis, white, old, white male, and I don't have any. There's much less risk for me than there would be for an incarcerated prisoner all sorts of people and there's less risk for you.

0:54:53 - Alex Hanna
But I mean it's the fact that I mean this is a technology that gets kind of honed. These are people who pay for them, that people I'm helping to make it better. Yeah, right, I mean you are giving training data up voluntarily, and you know I mean, leo. How closely have you read their privacy policy?

0:55:11 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I read it. I did, I read it.

0:55:14 - Alex Hanna
Oh, 77 pages. Did you read it or did you have Claude summarize it?

0:55:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, I did both. Okay, they're very good, hold on Alex. These AI chatbots are very good.

0:55:30 - Paris Martineau
They're very good until they get something wrong, like they did in the intros for our two guests.

0:55:32 - Emily M. Bender
Yeah, oh, and you were just saying that it got wrong. So it sounds to me that the app that you are paying for and honing, you know, the surveillance through paying for, is basically, um, a daily diary for someone who's too lazy to do a daily diary, is that what, like?

0:55:46 - Leo Laporte
yeah and this way I don't get any of the insight or any of the deep understanding.

0:55:51 - Alex Hanna
There's no reflection. No reflection, it's just output.

0:55:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, in fact I just copy and paste it into my diary and I'm done. It's great, it's real time.

0:56:00 - Paris Martineau
You could get a chatbot or something to probably do the copying and pasting for you, so I'll be doing the copying and pasting for you, so you don't even have to look at those things I'm going to write a script to do that.

0:56:07 - Alex Hanna
You might even get a chatbot to do the introspection for you if you're particularly enterprising.

0:56:11 - Leo Laporte
They're very good at it actually.

0:56:14 - Jeff Jarvis
I want to go back to what Emily was starting on earlier, before you outed yourself. With that, leo is kind of good uses, bad uses, that there are lines and reasonable lines, but what are some of the criteria for those lines of good uses of AI and bad uses of AI?

0:56:31 - Emily M. Bender
So again, I'm not going to say AI, but I think we can talk about good and bad uses of automation.

0:56:36 - Leo Laporte
You say AI on your cover. Is that?

0:56:40 - Emily M. Bender
So we had an interesting fight with the copy editor because and we'll also leave it to me and Alex I wanted to put scare quotes on AI, like every single time we use it. At one point I actually had the phrase so-called scare quotes. Ai and Alex was like Emily you can have so-called or you can have the scare quotes.

0:56:54 - Jeff Jarvis
You can't have as an editor. Alex is right about that.

0:56:57 - Emily M. Bender
Yes, but so we use it without scare quotes when we're naming an industry and when we're naming the con and when we're naming a purported research field. But when we're talking about systems, tools, these kinds of things, that's where we want to take distance. And so I am happy to talk about good and bad uses of automation, but I'm not gonna talk about good and bad uses of AI, because that sort of presupposes that AI is a thing as opposed to an ideological project.

0:57:24 - Alex Hanna
Okay, yeah, and I think there's.

I mean you, jeff, you started with a quote from from us, so I will do the thing where I will respond with a quote. And so on page 14, we say there are applications of machine learning that are well scoped, well tested and involve appropriate training data such that they deserve their place among the tools we use on a regular basis. These include such everyday things such as or not such as. I'm adding that things as spell checkers no longer simple dictionary lookups but able to flag real world words used incorrectly and other more sophisticated technologies like image processing used by radiologists to determine which parts of a scan or x-ray require the most scrutiny. But in the cacophony of marketing and startup pitches, these sensible use cases are swamped by promises of machines that can effectively do magic, leading users to rely on them for information, decision-making or cost savings, often to the detriment or to the detriment of others due to their detriment. So, yeah, I mean thinking about first doing that thing and disentangling and say there is no unified technology such as. Ai is helpful because it unreifies it, it unthingifies it, and this is something we're riffing off.

Lucy Suchman here has a great article called the uncomplicated. What is it called the uncomplicated thingness of AI, this article that she has.

And then, and also Emily Tucker. She has an article called Artifices and Intelligence which disentangles this and says we need to be in chief, speaking specifically about the harms of AI and how we need to be very specific in the technologies we talk to because it helps talk about what those harms are specifically. And so, yeah, I mean we're not opposed to machine learning or a body of methods that could be large pattern matching at scale, because that's pretty useful in some domains. But these quote unquote. You know everything. Machines that Timmy Jabrou has called them is something that you know is not what we're looking for and not helpful sort of technology in the world.

0:59:38 - Paris Martineau
Obviously, there have been a lot of technologies, even just over the past decade or two, that have gone through hype cycles. Why do you think that the hype cycle we're seeing for AI is so pronounced and seemingly on a scale that's unparalleled?

0:59:56 - Emily M. Bender
It seems to be basically a meat point between enormous amounts of investment and this connection to our science fiction imagination that we have been cultivating, and I love genre fiction. So like no shade on science fiction. But I do want to cast shade on the tech companies that are basically borrowing from science fiction discourses and saying those worlds that you had so much fun imagining yourself in they're real now because we're going to oversell our technology and say that it's exactly that thing. So I think it's that kind of a combination, Plus maybe the fact that we have even greater centralization of capital than we did in the previous hype cycle, so there's like more money to do it than there was previously.

1:00:42 - Leo Laporte
It sounds like your issue is of classification, though right, you're not against LLMs.

1:00:48 - Emily M. Bender
Well. So language modeling as a technology is old and useful. Synthetic text extruding machines, taking the LLMs and using them to just like produce text that corresponds to nothing, anybody said. I do have an issue with that, and I think it's actually despoiling our information ecosystem too. I mean your diary that you don't really care to write. It doesn't really matter that it's got a bunch of untrue things in it. But as soon as someone starts using perplexity to look up information and then sharing that information, this can be quite problematic.

1:01:17 - Leo Laporte
Do it all the time.

1:01:19 - Paris Martineau
He does it all the time and no matter how many times we show him or tell him hey, not everything perplexity says is always accurate continues I've said that it's important for humans to be part of the process.

1:01:33 - Leo Laporte
I'm not saying, you know, just let put the ai stuff out, um, but I found it to be very useful. Um, you know, I generated your bios, uh, with perplexity, um, of course I'm going to check it.

1:01:46 - Paris Martineau
But it got something wrong.

1:01:48 - Alex Hanna
And it got something wrong and immediately it said that Emily was the senior. I think that was me.

1:01:54 - Leo Laporte
I was getting something wrong and, by the way, let's point out, humans make mistakes too, and I agree with stochastic parents. One of the points was you know, because it's a computer, we ascribe it more. You know accuracy and importance, and I think that is an error. I agree with you 100% on that.

1:02:13 - Emily M. Bender
So people make mistakes, systems output errors, and one of the things about making a mistake is that you can take accountability for it and you can learn from it. If a system makes an error, then it becomes a question of okay, are we using the system in such a way that those errors are going to cause problems or such a way that we can catch the errors? But I don't think it's fair to say humans make mistakes too, as an excuse for the errors of a system that couldn't possibly take accountability for them in the first place.

1:02:39 - Leo Laporte
I only mean it in the sense that I vet the input I get from humans as well as from LLMs. I mean it's probably imprudent to trust either fully.

1:02:51 - Emily M. Bender
So I think the relationship that you have with a person that you are exchanging information with and the relationship that you have with an LLM ought to be different things.

1:03:01 - Leo Laporte
Why.

1:03:02 - Emily M. Bender
Right. So, among other things, if you hear something from a person and it seems fishy, you can ask them for more information when did you get that? And what they say back to you is, if it's in good faith, actually their understanding of where they got it. If you put a query in to clot or chat, gpt or perplexity, and something came out that looked fishy and you said, oh, tell me where you got that. What comes out is just more synthetic text and actually has no bearing on where the previous synthetic text came from. Oh, that's correct.

1:03:33 - Alex Hanna
Yeah, and I mean I think there's really kind of an idea that I mean you have kind of a model of action of what's going to happen in a relationship, but you don't really have a model. You know, I can have meaningful expectations with Emily as my co-author. I know her disciplinary background. I might not have that kind of meaningful interaction with a complete random person but at least may know various different courses of action if I'm being had, if they're a conman.

1:04:01 - Leo Laporte
Look, I understand.

1:04:04 - Alex Hanna
Well, first off, I what is driving, you know what is you're, you're still using a probabilistic machine and there's I think humans are probabilistic machines.

1:04:13 - Leo Laporte
I hate to say it, but I don't think there's much of a distinction. So this, however now we're going to now we're really stepping in it. So I mean I understand humans and machines and I also understand that the language we use, like artificial intelligence, muddies that distinction and I think you're right to correct that Reason thinking training, all this language. We just don't have a good language for talking about this kind of thing.

1:04:39 - Jeff Jarvis
these machines, Well, emily, both of you as linguists, do we have a better language? What do you suggest in place of it?

1:04:45 - Emily M. Bender
The reason we keep running into problems, saying, well, we don't have a good word to use instead of reasoning for describing what these machines do, is because people want to say it is something like reasoning and it isn't, and so we're looking for like reasoning with a little decoration on it that says, well, this is the computer version of it and that's already wrong.

1:05:03 - Leo Laporte
I agree, I agree a hundred percent, but again, again, in discourse, especially on the show like this, we have to use language that people understand. So we have to use similes and metaphors, but I think it's really important to say it isn't the same thing. They're very different, and I don't disagree with you. I feel like that's nitpicking. The value, though, of what you get out of an llm to say well, it's not human, it's not reasoning, that's true. What you get out of an LLM to say well it's not human, it's not reasoning, that's true.

1:05:30 - Emily M. Bender
So you might be finding value in the output of an LLM.

1:05:33 - Leo Laporte
And I'm not alone.

1:05:34 - Emily M. Bender
But you are the one finding that value. It is not that it is valuable, right, well, so what? Yeah, well, okay, so environmentally ruinous, built on lots of stolen data, built on lots of labor exploitation, and also unreliable, but sounding confident, impugnable.

1:05:50 - Leo Laporte
You could say the same thing about a Google search. This is the internet you're describing.

1:05:56 - Paris Martineau
Google search was not that unreliable, yet sounding confident, until the introduction of AI and recent changes over the past, like five to 10 years.

1:06:09 - Emily M. Bender
So Google Search has its problems, and then you look to the work of Dr Sophia Noble for nice documentation of it, like really thorough scholarly documentation. But, that being said, when you did a Google Search and you weren't getting these AI overviews out, what you got was a link to a webpage that you could go evaluate. That somebody had accountability for and I'm sorry to cut you off there. Paris.

1:06:29 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, no, that's pretty much. I mean, that's much better than what I was going to say.

1:06:33 - Alex Hanna
And the provenance.

I mean the provenance is important and we hammer on it and I mean there's a few I'm trying to go back up to the chain to a few things. I mean the metaphors, because the metaphors matter, right. I mean we can use the anthropomorphizing language and what it does. It does a few things. It does this notion that this thing is intelligent or there's some kind of access to some kind of a brain-like infrastructure that it's retrieving. That intelligence does get kind of equated with consciousness and you know, you don't have to go too far back to understand that intelligence has this very eugenicist history, and part of that eugenicist history is also equating intelligence with consciousness.

There's this essay by the late David Columbia where he talks about this notion of the equation, the equating of intelligence and consciousness, and how it's being used, of, you know, relating to certain people as subhuman because they're not as conscious, right, so that's part of what it does. Another thing is these things is okay, the learning or it learns just like a child does, or it's doing the same thing, and that's absolutely not what it's doing. And that matters quite significantly, because then we get into weird territory of like do robots have rights? Or you have this idea of syncopacy, or you're attributing human traits to probabilistic modeling, and that's a very dangerous road yeah, I agree with you, 100 in fact.

1:08:00 - Leo Laporte
I fight, I fight all the time on this show to kind of de-anthropomorphize our language. It's unfortunate we don't really have a lot of choices. But I think you're absolutely right. It's one of the reasons when we talk about agi I say, well, that's really, that's a meaningless, that's bs. Yeah so, but, but at the same time that's a legitimate criticism and I agree, agree that language also and I know this is a lot of your work too, dr Bender is language kind of informs how you think, how one one perceives things. So it's really important. But I just, I feel like to me there is some utility to this stuff and I recognize there's environmental damage to it. There's, you know, but there is environmental damage to it. There's, you know, but there's environmental damage to using the internet. Maybe not as much, but there is significant environmental damage to using the internet. It's not unusual for us to use technologies that have consequences. A lot of jobs have been lost to the internet. Is that enough to say let's? Are you advocating the abandonment of this line of inquiry?

1:09:08 - Alex Hanna
I mean it's not. We're not opposed to exploring different kinds of thinking of I'd say not even opposed to the kind of class of methods of learning from a set of data that is a helpful kind of series. You know it's a helpful innovation, right? Language modeling is helpful. I mean it. I say I've been saying on all these interviews, like my dissertation was building a prediction model. That was, you know, discern was doing classification of you know whether something fell in one bin or another relating to something that was useful for social movement researchers. That's fine. Modeling things is fine. We're not going to that place. But you also have to see about what, comparatively, you're doing. Right. I mean, we're in this moment where data center production is actively inhibiting the climate goals that the Paris Agreement set out. Right. Microsoft and Google had climate goals that Microsoft said agreement was set out. Right. Microsoft and Google had climate goals that Microsoft said it was going to be carbon negative. By what? 2030 or 2045.

Never mind that yeah, it just completely blew it out of the water. Google went 49 over the 2019 baseline. You know this, this is, and so you have in and I mean that's from their own sustainability reports um, there's some estimates that say that it's it's maybe closer to two or three hundred percent because they're not factored. They're, they had factor in carbon credits and carbon offsets, and so you have this. So, comparatively, I mean, it's doing much more. It's much more ruinous for the environment. In addition to increased chip fabrication and PFAS that's going in forever chemicals that are going into the ground. You know technologies that the earlier hype cycle of computing turned parts of Santaara county into super fun sites, uh, and caused, you know so many just a whole rash of um people and women experiencing birth defects.

1:11:14 - Leo Laporte
Then you have, but we're participating in that right now on a zoom call, I mean uh yeah, the best solution, but I think we make our own clothes and grow our own food, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

1:11:27 - Alex Hanna
I'd prefer it leo, it's like comparing slippery slope fallacy right all right okay, okay, I mean you really want to go down there.

1:11:35 - Leo Laporte
I mean we're not, you know, we're not, I'm just saying there are consequences to technological innovation. The industrial, era.

1:11:40 - Alex Hanna
Who's asking for this?

1:11:53 - Paris Martineau
I'm trying to compare the environmental impacts of large-scale AI production and training. Trying to compare that to like a Google search or a Zoom call is like comparing a forest fire to a match and I think if it's the dominant technology, where all the venture capital dollars are going, where all of the investment, energy, where all of the R&D focus, where every company is focusing on and pouring all of its resources into, that's going to have a considerable impact on the world, especially if it's extremely energy inefficient and disastrous for the environment.

1:12:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I want to examine something else, which is the meaning of meaning. I scream all the time that large language models have no sense of meaning, thus no sense of truth, and so on, but since we have a professor of linguistics here, how do we define meaning?

1:12:50 - Emily M. Bender
Yeah, so this is tricky and I want to point out that I was recently actually in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum doing a debate with Sebastian Bubeck, hosted by Eliza Strickland of IEEE Spectrum, sort of punitively, on the question do large language models understand? And I took that seriously and provided a definition of meaning and understanding and said no. And Sebastian said well, nobody knows what understanding means. We've been struggling with it for millennia.

1:13:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm like I just gave a definition. Nobody understands understanding.

1:13:19 - Emily M. Bender
So the definition that Alexander Kohler and I give and, by the way, I collect coauthors named Alex, in case you haven't noticed, Different Alex, Alexander Kohler and I have a book called Climbing Towards. Sorry, not a book, that was just a paper. Climbing Towards NLU I forget the subtitle, but something like a meaning and understanding in something in the age of data and don't ever put an acronym in a title. That was a bad idea. But anyway, this is a paper where we're talking about this question. This is published in 2020. Do large language models understand?

And the crux of the argument is that languages are systems of signs where you have, for any given word, there's the form of the word, how you spell it, how you say it if you're speaking a sign language, how you articulate it with your hands on your face, and then there's the meaning what does it refer to? And that meaning is a conventional thing that's shared within the community that the language belongs to, but also is sort of constantly changing every time you use a word. So it's true that meaning is use right, that when you use a word, you change the meaning. But that doesn't mean that if you just look at all the word spellings next to each other and see which letters in which combinations go with other letters in which combinations, that you get to the meaning. And this is a really important distinction. And it's hard to see, especially if you're not used to being a linguist and looking at language this way, because when we perceive language in you know from a language that we know, we immediately have a guess as to the meaning. It's right there. So it's really hard to separate the form and the meaning when we are in the context where we know a language. You can feel it if you think back to foreign language classes you've taken.

Or I have this thought experiment that I like to take people through. I say imagine that you are in the National Library of Thailand, or if you speak and read Thai, then it's the Parliamentary Library of Georgia, and if you speak both Thai and Georgian, then I want to meet you. I haven't met that person yet, but you know, so one of these places, so let's say Thailand, and I've gone in ahead of you and I have removed every single book that had anything other than just Thai script in it no pictures, no mathematical equations, no bilingual dictionaries, just Thai. And I arranged for someone to bring you delicious Thai food three times a day. You don't get to talk to them, but you know you're fed, it's comfortable, you can stay there as long as you want.

Could you learn Thai, Right? And if so, how? What would you do? And the kinds of answers I get from people are well, I would very carefully go through and find like the really commonly occurring sub sequences. I'm like yeah, well, that would help you figure out what the function words are Like. Maybe Thai has a word like that and it's probably this one Not going to tell you what anything else means, right? Or I would look and look and look until I saw a book that I knew was a translation of a book I already know, and then I could work it out from there. Well, sure, but then you're bringing in some external knowledge and then my favorite answer is I just eat the yummy Thai food. So the point of all this is that the meaning is not in the text. We get to the meaning because we bring in our knowledge of linguistic system and also all of our reasoning about what the person must have been trying to say by picking those words and what a language model gets, as its input is just the form of the text.

1:16:26 - Leo Laporte
So what's your prescription?

1:16:31 - Emily M. Bender
What's a prescription? So, in general, make sure you're using technology that is well scoped and evaluated for the context that you're using it in and also, by the way, as ethically produced as possible. And so you said before you know, are we saying to you know, do you want people to stop doing this? And Alex gave the first part of the answer, which is you know, machine learning applications make sense technology. You know there's, there's reasonable technologies, but what I would like people to stop using, and I would like to basically discourage people from using, is the media. Synthesis machines. So synthetic text, I think is problematic. Synthetic images so image generators I would feel okay about if I knew that they were collected on consentfully contributed images and the artists were getting credit for it and they weren't just like everything, including lots of really awful stuff scraped off the internet and they didn't have to have their output cleaned up by exploited workers. And even still, you would want to say, by the way, this image was synthetic.

1:17:29 - Alex Hanna
Yeah, and I mean in addition, synthetic image generators and video generators are that much more environmentally ruinous comparatively, just because inference costs that much more. Yeah.

1:17:42 - Leo Laporte
I think you're in a losing battle, but okay, I mean, that sounds fine to me. I think you're in a losing battle, but okay, I mean that sounds fine to me, I like it, I think it's a great thesis. It's fine, but it's like saying that everybody should stop wearing running shoes. But, leo, don't we?

1:17:57 - Jeff Jarvis
have standards for something. Aren't there things we want to try to aspire to, absolutely?

1:18:01 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm saying you're absolutely right.

1:18:10 - Jeff Jarvis
I just think that unfortunately, the horse has left the barn. Part of this is not just the technology. You write about the hype and the harm right, talk about the harm of the hype right. So that's media. That's not.

1:18:16 - Alex Hanna
That's that's not the technology, that's honest. That's the hype itself, right? So we? We define hype as the aggrandizement of some kind of a product that you must use and if you don't, you will be left to. You know, to whatever. If you're a student, you're not going to be learning as much. If you're a teacher, you're not going to be able to grade as much. If you're a worker, you can't use it in the workplace.

And then AI hype has that particular quality of being about this particular technology, right? And so one of the things that we're seeing and I'll speak, you know, specifically to working conditions is that much of the technology does a pretty poor job and it has all these different features that Emily spoke about, and people are losing jobs to it left and right. So you can see what's happening with the Doge Boys, which originally what that had been the tool that they had been using. It's called GSAI and one of the developers went to Blue Sky to talk about it, and it had originally been a sandbox that was being used to test and evaluate different LLMs and different. I don't know if they did anything other than LLMs with that technology, but it was an evaluation sandbox.

And so when the Doge Boys came in and they took over the US Digital Service. They said, oh, look at this thing, we can automate X, y, z with this right, and part of that's because of who Elon Musk is. But then much of that I mean he's a high participant and so we can replace all kinds of creative, important work that has to do a lot with institutional knowledge about making the government work as it should and taking and removing those jobs whole cloth. Same things happened. I was reading a piece just recently by Bryant Merchant when he was talking about how Duolingo was replacing so many different content developers people that were writing interesting questions, good and reliable translations and replacing them with some kind of a pretty bad and we're not sure what. It is probably some LLM of that. And now what they expect is that Duolingo is going to have these translations or even these vocalizations that are supposed to be accurate representations of language, and now that's just completely gone with that, with that product especially if they're getting some marketing pushback for market pushback.

1:20:51 - Leo Laporte
Well, yeah, that doesn't work. Well, yeah, stop you.

1:20:55 - Alex Hanna
But I guess that's the thing Leo is like when, when is it working? Well, I mean it's saying like these things cannot. There's. There's very few instances in which a technology has replaced one thing whole cloth. I mean, maybe we have the horse and buggy. I think one thing that people talk about is the elevator operator. Right, I mean more of what it's doing is it's either taking something that was an important kind of labor function out of the world or is displacing that labor onto someone else up or down the supply chain.

1:21:34 - Jeff Jarvis
If I could put you both in front of a room of 50 technology journalists, something I actually want to do, oh, thank you Sounds good. No, I do. The problem is getting them in the room, and Paris is a technology journalist, but a smart one. What would your message to them be about this hype? I mean?

1:21:57 - Alex Hanna
one thing would be that technology journalism has become so much access journalism has been about reprinting press releases. It's been very credulous about what products do and what they are and why we should be wowed. And I think we really need to go back to the first principles of journalism, thinking about, well, who's benefiting from this and why are they selling something like this? What do they have to gain? What is the political economy thinking about this industry Getting beyond the gee whiz of the product? Garen Spirk, who is a journalist at the AP, has a really nice guidebook that she helped develop with the AP in which she says as much you know, get back to your ABCs of journalism. And then Karen Howe has also been doing these trainings with the Pulitzer Center around how to report around AI. She's also coming out with a book on OpenAI that we're going to be in conversation with her in a few weeks. That's called Emperor, emperor Empire, empire of AI, which is about open AI and the palace. The sequel is Emperor of AI.

1:23:12 - Emily M. Bender
The sequel is the Emperor has no Clothes. The Emperor has no Clothes, right.

1:23:16 - Alex Hanna
And it's about the downfall of open AI fingers crossed, but these are important kinds of shoe leather journalism that we need folks to do. You're really getting away from the product and the press release. Puff pieces.

1:23:30 - Emily M. Bender
Yeah, and so everything that Alex said and I think just sort of lower level details I mean this high level thing of basically holding power to account and tracing who's benefiting is the main job. And then one of the lower level steps is to be very, very skeptical about claims of functionality. Especially, I see a lot of really frustrating journalism that is driven by what we've taken to calling paper-shaped objects that these tech companies and non-profit-ish tech research labs are putting out into the world, sometimes no longer even on the archive pre-print server, but just like on company blog pages. And they tend to be a lot of them, very, very slim on details of how something was evaluated. And then you'll see reporting that like pulls numbers out of these papers and doesn't contextualize them as being just academically worthless.

And we have a lot of fun on our podcast sort of tearing apart some of these paper-shaped objects. So we don't watch videos and talk over them, but we do read out bits of articles and react to them, and that's where the Mystery Science Theater inspiration comes through. So I think that journalists are really great at coming in skeptically, or can be right, and, as Alex mentioned, there are some wonderful people doing great work in this space. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of the gee whiz access journalism that probably pulls in more ad dollars because the tech companies wanna advertise their products next to it, although it was fun, this morning.

Yeah.

1:25:01 - Alex Hanna
We did have a fun thing where we had two, so we were on Marketplace Tech together and then Emily was on the CBC in Canada and before the Marketplace Tech there were. I think there was a few different versions of this, depending on you know who it went to, but I think it was uniformly an AI ad, or at least one. I think the one I got was a FinTech ad. It was Robin Hood.

1:25:27 - Emily M. Bender
Yeah, so I got a couple different versions of an AI ad and the host starts the piece about the interview with us with don't believe the hype about AI, and it was so great to hear that right after this AI ad, kind of exactly where we are right now, which is surrounded by AI.

1:25:46 - Leo Laporte
But don't believe the hype. I don't disagree with you. But at the same time I feel like there is some real value in these tools and I think some of the points you make are absolutely valid. I mean, you could make the same environmental points about automobiles. Uh, in fact, it's a real shame that we got automobiles and that if you come along, yeah, no, if you would come along 100 years ago maybe we would have trains and and uh, bicycles, boy, people try do you know why we have so few trains in the us and like so, like, so few rail based like urban rail systems, urban transportation systems?

1:26:32 - Emily M. Bender
It's because the tire industry right advocated for tearing up those rails so they could sell more tires. And I am mad about that all the time.

1:26:40 - Leo Laporte
That's the power brokers story. We were talking about that Exactly.

1:26:43 - Emily M. Bender
So the car metaphor is apt and it is. You're maybe setting up as a slippery slope thing, but it was a problem. We took a wrong turn there. That doesn't mean we have to do it again, right?

1:26:52 - Alex Hanna
Nope, no pun intended there, and I think that's another thing I mean. So just a. I mean push on this. I mean I think it's. There's a for our podcast. We reviewed an awful book, absolutely awful. It's called Super Agency and it's written by Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, and Greg Beato Thank you, emily is much better at retaining names than I am and I was like it rhymes with this, I think, and so one of the things that he criticizes in the book, or they criticize it I don't think anything rhymes with Beato. That's the problem, beato. Yeah.

1:27:33 - Leo Laporte
Orange. Orange rhymes with Beato, that's true.

1:27:36 - Alex Hanna
Nothing rhymes, yeah.

And so one of the things, one of the anecdotes in there which I think it drives me up the wall is he talks about the Luddites and we me up the wall is um the uh.

He talks about the luddites and we talk about the luddites in our book too, and there's a few recent histories of the luddites that, uh, folks like brian merchant and and and gavin mueller and jayden sadowski talk about and have talked about, and and uh, he says you know what, if the luddites had one, you know, and everybody would rush forward and industry would be rushing forward, and then, but you know, we would have solved child labor all over the world, but Britain would have had really nice blankets and they would have been artists, and it's just to me that strikes me as so patently ridiculous. It's like, how do you think child labor was fixed? How do you think the weekend was created? You know it was from people actually fighting back against technologies that made their lives worse. As if you know, as if these things, you know, solve themselves, and it's not through massive worker struggle or struggle against child labor or struggle against environmental degradation. I mean, you know, we can think that the horse has left the barn here, or the train has already left the station, or whatever.

1:28:58 - Emily M. Bender
When speaking of trains, we don't have any stations though.

1:29:01 - Alex Hanna
I know.

1:29:03 - Paris Martineau
The car has left the parking lot. The car has left the garage.

1:29:06 - Alex Hanna
You know the Porsche has left the parking lot, the car has left the garage. You know the Porsche has left the dealership, the Tesla has left the charging station, whatever.

1:29:15 - Jeff Jarvis
The Cybertruck, however, has gone nowhere because it's broken.

1:29:18 - Alex Hanna
The Cybertruck has burst into flames spontaneously, and you know. But I mean it doesn't mean one shouldn't struggle for this right, I mean, and that's, I think there's. There's a notion that there's the engines of history, as if technology moves itself, you know, but absolutely, and as if protections come into play from the beneficence of billionaires. But that certainly doesn't happen.

1:29:45 - Leo Laporte
No, that's not true, right, yeah?

1:29:48 - Alex Hanna
so why? Why struggle against her? So why have good journalism on this or right? Why write a text like this when the mainstream seems to say you know one, two and three? I mean I, you know. First off, the mainstream may say that, but I mean a lot of people don't like this stuff.

1:30:07 - Leo Laporte
No, there's about 50-50, I'd say it's less than 50-50.

1:30:10 - Alex Hanna
You think it's something like 80-20. I mean, there was a survey that Pew did of workers and they said something like 17% of workers had used this at work at all. And then you know, most people hadn't heard of it and then 30 people just didn't want to use it at all. And then you know, most people hadn't heard of it and then 30 people just didn't want to use it at all. And Pew has done a few and we did. We were quoted for a piece in Ars Technica that talked about the comparative of the general public versus AI. Quote unquote AI experts In general, the general public is like what is this?

What is this? And then the people that had heard of thing of lms are like I don't want anything to do with this. And so I think there's, I mean, most people. You know leo, you say you're a cis white guy and but but also you're, you know, you've got your technologist, you got this apple computer in your background I've been reporting on computers for uh 40 years yeah, and I've always attempted not to be a beltway journalist, to be an industry journalist.

1:31:09 - Leo Laporte
One of the reasons you're on the show I mean, this is a show about AI and one of the reasons you're on the show is to get all points of view. I don't disagree with you and I think Create the Future we Want is really probably the most important part of the title. It's an opportunity for us to uh, to say this is not what we want or this is not how we want it to be. Um, so I, uh everybody should listen to your podcast. There's somebody in our chat who says don't let them forget to plug mystery ai hype theater 3000.

1:31:37 - Paris Martineau
It's really good, so we'll plug I'll be listening to it after this.

1:31:41 - Alex Hanna
It sounds exactly hold up your books again hold on the book is the ai on how to fight big tech's Hype and Create the Future.

1:31:48 - Leo Laporte
You Want Notice all my little things there, and there's actually a really good webpage for the book, which is where you should go not to Amazon, but go to the webpage and you can read more about it and so forth, and submit Fresh AI Hell if you wish. Just come up with some fresh AI hell.

1:32:07 - Emily M. Bender
It's all over the place and that's for the podcast. We end each episode with a small handful of fresh AI hell, and then once a quarter or so, we have to go through the backlog and we have a sort of frenetic but cathartic all hell episode.

1:32:18 - Paris Martieau
There's no lack of it. So much, and to be clear, the very cool website is theconai.

1:32:25 - Paris Martineau
A very cool website is theconai.

1:32:26 - Emily M. Bender
AI, I was just about to say Very easy to recommend the con that was. Alex's stroke of brilliance to think if that was available and then to grab it when it was.

1:32:34 - Leo Laporte
Advertisements may not be good in book titles, but they're excellent for TLDs, that's all. Thank you so much it's great to meet you both, emily Bender, alex Hannah. Thank you so much. The book again, the ai con uh, you've really raised some great points. I appreciate your time, thank you very much.

Yeah, thanks leo, thanks paris, thanks jeff this episode of intelligent machines is brought to you by big id. Big id, the next generation ai powered data security, compliance and privacy solution. Ai is transforming businesses, but with data risk, bias and compliance challenges, there's a big question are you adopting ai responsibly? We're just talking about that. Big id delivers end-to-end ai and data governance to help enterprises manage risk, enforce policies and ensure responsible AI adoption, make sure AI-only access is safe to use relevant data and automatically tag sensitive information by policy and type. Bigid is the only leading solution to uncover dark data through AI classification, to identify AI risk, to manage the data lifecycle and scale your AI strategy. It integrates with your existing tech stack with unmatched data source coverage, and it allows you to automate privacy and security workflows, take action on data risks with automated remediation orchestrations, automate privacy management, regulatory compliance, data rights requests and more Partners include ServiceNow, palo Alto Networks, microsoft, google, aws all the tools you already use and with BigID's advanced AI models, you gain visibility and control over all your data. It's the platform that Intuit named number one for data classification in accuracy, speed and scalability.

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1:36:13 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, you were yeah, you were no, no, you were giving vegan. I'm the wall, you wall, being surrounded by people being like yeah, uh, italian sandwiches are pretty good and you're like, but um, you're they're saying don't eat that salami.

1:36:29 - Leo Laporte
Do you know?

1:36:30 - Paris Martineau
under no circumstances did they say all ai has no value? They were saying you know, yeah, certain tools have purposes, but overall I think the industry and then you kept jumping in ai image generator.

1:36:44 - Leo Laporte
She wouldn't look, she can have her.

1:36:45 - Paris Martineau
She can have her preferences. My guy vegan that's. That didn't happen until after the show. That's a vegan, that's not you. Multiple times jumped in to say well, you believe that all ai has no value, to the point where both the youtube and discord chat had people that are normally your biggest ai defenders being like well, I don't think they said it has no value.

1:37:07 - Leo Laporte
They absolutely said that what are you talking about? You don't think they thought what are you talking about? They won't even use it. They won't use an AI image generator, they won't use perplexity, they won't touch it.

1:37:18 - Paris Martineau
They repeatedly in response to you saying, well, I don't think that AI has no value. They were like I'm not saying that every like artificial intelligence or machine learning tool is completely without value.

1:37:31 - Leo Laporte
Alex. Alex admitted that he used basically ai in his thesis. Uh, he just didn't want to call it ai. He used machine learning and models, but that's a little confusing to me because I don't think they really like their favor of uses, their favor of use, yes, I mean that's literally was the through line of our conversation.

1:37:49 - Paris Martineau
That's just what I was saying. Was vegan about it.

1:37:51 - Leo Laporte
I misunderstood that. Yeah, I thought they were saying well, but they're.

1:37:54 - Jeff Jarvis
They're against everything that leo likes. Yeah they're against the chat bots and they're against the b and they're against things that leo values and they're saying that's not valuable and it's also dangerous. So I think you're both right.

1:38:06 - Leo Laporte
They sure didn't want me to use perplexity.

1:38:11 - Paris Martineau
Listen, I'm just as someone in the Discord chat says, If you ask me, Google search is exactly as bad as perplexity. Well, that's because Google search is now an oops all I situation. Even if you take the AI out, it's just crap. I mean, I'm not going to argue that Google search is good, because that's just not true.

1:38:38 - Jeff Jarvis
But I think it's better than perplexity.

1:38:39 - Paris Martineau
As Joe, Esposito said in the chat wonderful to see Paris Martineau having advocates and not having to make the argument on her own, and I agree.

1:38:46 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's why we have people like that on. We want to give everybody a voice.

1:38:51 - Paris Martineau
I get one every five months, and that's. I get two. Well it's, that's great.

1:38:56 - Leo Laporte
Okay, it's hard for me to do a show that is anti-technology. I'll be honest with you.

1:39:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, yeah, listen, Leo, your role is always to be a provocateur and the devil's advocate. In this case, it was the devil you were advocating for in the view of three of the people here.

And I'm kind of in the middle. That's an interesting question, though you raised about how to comment on and research these things, and what Emily said was first principles is they do these things, they shouldn't do. So I judge the output, but it's interesting how to do scholarly research on this topic and where you find rules there. I would have liked to have heard. The one question I was gonna ask, but I forgot to, was what the reaction is to them in faculty meetings when the computer science people come in. That's got to be fun.

1:39:54 - Leo Laporte
I now understand why Tim Nigebro had so many detractors at Google and why, in fact, that entire ethics team was fired because they were challenging them. They were the poop, the turd and the punch bowl bowl.

1:40:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, you've got a nicer way to put that I was trying to find a better one.

1:40:13 - Leo Laporte
I really was. You saw the pause thinking what else?

1:40:17 - Paris Martineau
what else is like calling people excrement? Let me, let me ask chat gpt.

1:40:22 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm gonna ask her um. Let's see what's a nicer way to say turn the punch bowl having trouble with my mouse.

1:40:29 - Leo Laporte
It's getting trapped in the wrong screen a squeaky wheel uh, no, not exactly. What's a nicer way of saying turd in a punch bowl? By the way, this is a perfectly good use of this. I know I'm burning down the rainforest.

1:40:47 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a perfectly good use of this. I know I'm burning down the rainforest. It's a great thesaurus machine. I know I'm bringing that. I love it for that.

1:40:52 - Leo Laporte
That's a legitimate fly in the ointment, a cloud on a sunny day, a wrinkle in an otherwise smooth plan, a sour note in a symphony, a pebble in the shoe, a drop of vinegar in the honey, that's a good one. A hiccup in the festivities? Or a rain cloud at a pickup?

I'm picnic, that is pretty good a rain cloud at a pickup hey, honey, you need my umbrella, uh I'm just saying those two were like a drop of vinegar in the honey, all right, all right. Where? Where were we let's? Uh, I, I have tons of news, tons of stories get to it tell me what. Tell me what. By the way, how was the when you did talk to them on uh ai inside? Was it a similar conversation, or was it different, or?

1:41:39 - Jeff Jarvis
no, it was different. It was different because because we're, we were exploring, kind of what they say uh, that's why, that's why the book, well yeah, that's why these two shows are so different and that's why the book well yeah that's why these two shows are so different, and that's what's great about it.

1:41:49 - Leo Laporte
It's great normally I try to read the book. I didn't realize we had a copy. That's the problem with that. I didn't work. How about farming robots who? Uh, open ai's big a higher? Farming robots seeding new startups, says the information rocket drew another one of those journalists writing a press release, rewriting a press release? Oh no, I'm gonna drop my subscription right now. Uh, let's see what else. Um, um, ai uses damages professional reputation. Ai, very important to pronounce that properly. Ai use damages professional reputation. According to Duke study, workers judge others for AI use and when they use it, they hide it.

1:42:40 - Jeff Jarvis
So this is in the blogging world. If you admit your mistake, then you raise your stature, because all I know that Jeff says when he's wrong and I can trust him better that he'll say so. So transparency is seen to be a good thing In the blogging world. No, if you admit you're using AI, people mistrust you Well because one, didn't we talk about this last week?

1:43:04 - Paris Martineau
I think we did. Two, it would make sense because if the reason why what people are looking for in a blog is your output of world words and your analysis of a situation, and if you tell them actually what you're reading is something I got for paying 20 a month to open ai, why would they turn to you for your expertise if it's not your expertise?

1:43:29 - Leo Laporte
Kind of got you there. I'm not answering any questions.

1:43:35 - Paris Martineau
Leo's mad.

1:43:39 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm just looking for stories.

1:43:40 - Paris Martineau
The apples are getting steamed on his shirt, which reduces the amount of allergens in them, as I learned from a former editor who's allergic to apples but would microwave one every day in the office so we could eat something like a baked apple.

1:43:54 - Leo Laporte
How long, how long do you make with how?

1:43:55 - Jeff Jarvis
long do you microwave it?

1:43:59 - Paris Martineau
why don't you ask chad gpt? Oh, okay actually, I guess, don't it'll hurt the environment a little bit uh, probably not enough to make it crazy should, I feel I mean look I mean my general value or the truthfulness of the result is should I just not use it just because of the environmental impact?

well, I'm the wrong person to ask, because my general output is to feel guilty about everything um, but given that she's nihilistic, then she doesn't care, because it doesn't mean well, that's part of probably the reason why the nihilism appeals to me is because otherwise I'd be overwhelmed by guilt at the way in which any action in our modern world contributes to we're burning down the forest even as we speak that's part of the reason why I don't I mean I personally try to limit my use of ai tools and other stuff just because I think it's environmentally sound.

It's the same reason why I recycle, even though it's not that big of an impact.

1:44:51 - Leo Laporte
I'm just a human person like I just think I drive an electric vehicle, I recycle, I, I do all the sorting and do, of course I mean everything is a personal choice, whatever you want to make feel guilty about.

1:45:03 - Paris Martineau
feel guilty about whatever you don't, you don't, you don't. Whatever you want to do, it's a personal decision. So you want a story.

1:45:08 - Leo Laporte
I feel guilty about everything too.

1:45:10 - Jeff Jarvis
On Tuesday, we had the Google Android event pre-IoT.

1:45:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, did you watch it?

1:45:15 - Jeff Jarvis
I didn't, but Line 73 has a summary, which is interesting, that they're going to put the Gemini into everything now. So it's not just that you get it in these odd places. Maybe it becomes habitual, and the use case that I see for it is Android Auto. Is that now you can ask it questions while you're driving, didn't we?

1:45:34 - Leo Laporte
just decide we shouldn't put AI in anything. Well.

1:45:38 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm confused. Is this the last episode of the show? It's the last episode.

1:45:47 - Leo Laporte
The next episode'm going to. The next episode's going to be about organic gardening and living off the land. Compost, damn it.

1:45:55 - Paris Martineau
No, seriously, I mean okay Well it's good to know that we can't have anybody with critical opinions of AI. Otherwise we're going to have someone on the podcast stomp their feet and say why can't we? How dare you talk about improving society if you?

1:46:10 - Leo Laporte
live in a society with them, and then now talk about how AI is going to be everywhere in your Android phone.

1:46:16 - Paris Martineau
Because part of choosing to do a podcast about a topic is you have to accept that being blindly positive about it 100% of the time isn't particularly interesting.

1:46:28 - Leo Laporte
I'm not. I'm saying we shouldn't do the story about AI in your phone, because that's a bad thing. In fact, I'll give you another one. Amazon is going to start using AI commercials when you pause the video on your Amazon Prime Video account.

1:46:41 - Paris Martineau
AI-created contextual ads. Explain to me how this is good. I'm only doing bad things, but AI is good.

1:46:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Ad is every all ai advertisers are going to love it because it's going to be in context with what's there and it's going to be at least right now until they

1:46:55 - Leo Laporte
increase the price yeah and con uh, the prime video service has a global audience of more than 300 million, is very popular. Uh, they had a big upfront event and at the upfront event, one of the things you do at upfronts is you say things that advertisers will be happy about.

1:47:12 - Jeff Jarvis
They're going to applaud you.

1:47:13 - Leo Laporte
Which is why I'm no longer invited to upfronts, and they say they're going to have AI generate contextual advertising. The ads will be created on the fly, depending on the specific scene of the ai of the tv show or movie that you've paused at. I'm a little nervous about. So this is the example they give if a viewer is watching a scene involving a loving phone call between a mother and daughter and you pause it right there, you'll get an ad for mobile phone service with ai generated text dynamically created right then and there it's an advertiser's dream?

1:47:54 - Jeff Jarvis
it is, isn't it? It's interruptive and it's contextual and it's personalized I don't like the pause ads.

1:48:00 - Leo Laporte
Have you been seeing those?

1:48:01 - Paris Martineau
no, I don't yeah, they suck I don't like they make me mad yeah, mad, yeah Hi, this is Benito.

1:48:07 - Paris Martieau
So I think this sounds like we're coming towards the end game of AI here. This is what they want Of course.

1:48:14 - Paris Martineau
They don't have to produce the color they want to have your glasses, in addition to be doing facial recognition, to, whenever you're not actively facial recognizing someone, to be showing you ads in all of the free space in your lens.

1:48:26 - Paris Martieau
So here's the danger All of the AI you're doing, you're training this stuff, you're enabling this stuff.

1:48:31 - Paris Martineau
Well, no, and that's throwing it away. I was going to say that those ads are going to have your entire life to feed off of Leo because you gave that to him. When B gets acquired by buy sell ads in three and a half years, we're gonna know you so well they're gonna, they're gonna.

1:48:51 - Leo Laporte
This is one thing that bugs me about that conversation. Wouldn't you prefer to have an ad for something you're interested in than not I?

1:48:59 - Jeff Jarvis
have no, would you rather?

1:49:00 - Leo Laporte
have an ad for cat food than bar I'd rather not have billboards all around me.

1:49:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I agree, no, that's not the question.

1:49:04 - Leo Laporte
that's not the question. That's not what you're talking about. No, I know what you're talking about.

1:49:10 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm agreeing with you, leo, I agree with you, Leo.

1:49:11 - Paris Martineau
I specifically, I go into all of my apps painstakingly. I've gone into the settings of my Wi-Fi, of my cell service, and I've turned off personalized ads.

1:49:22 - Leo Laporte
Because you don't want to see an ad that you're interested in.

1:49:24 - Paris Martineau
You don't want to see ads that you're not, you're not going to see less.

1:49:26 - Leo Laporte
You don't understand, you're not going to see fewer ads.

1:49:28 - Paris Martineau
No, I know that Mark Zuckerberg has explained it to me that the only thing that I'm missing out on is having ads that are better for me. I don't want ads generally, and it's easier for me to ignore them if I'm not seeing something that is like how did they get this piece of information from me? Where, like me trying to?

1:49:46 - Leo Laporte
you just don't want ads to be effective, is what you're saying? Because you will buy it. So if you got a cat food ad, you might actually buy it as opposed to no.

1:49:55 - Paris Martineau
Specifically because something is broken with me that I detest advertising so much that, even if it's a product that I know I would like, I don't purposefully do not buy it because I've been shown a bad industry. You do understand that right up until recently, I did not work in an ad supported industry. Oh, that's true. For the last five years I did not. That's a good and that was a great always ad supported, but yeah that's a good point.

1:50:18 - Leo Laporte
Barely the information was subscription supported. They had no ads ever correct.

1:50:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, they advertised their own events and they constantly advertised their upgrade to premium, upgrade to premium.

1:50:30 - Leo Laporte
That drove me crazy. I didn't, I had no interest in it and I was already spending 500 a year I just don't think that it should be.

1:50:38 - Paris Martineau
I I don't think that I should have to love ads I think it's perfectly fine for me to detest them and want them.

1:50:45 - Leo Laporte
I'll make the argument though you know I'll make.

1:50:47 - Paris Martineau
I understand logically as to why people might want ads that are better for them that's why you buy everything off of instagram this wouldn't exist without advertisers.

1:50:57 - Leo Laporte
That's the business model. The only other choice would be either for me to work, for everybody to work for free, or for us. Well, only do subscription. Jessica Lessing was able to do that, leo.

1:51:09 - Paris Martineau
Let me go back to you, though Isn't something you've often said that a point of contention between you and advertisers is that you don't want to give them massive amounts of data on all of your listeners. Instead, you want to give them a responsible amount of data. So, in some way, aren't the core of your argument against what you actually do as a show?

1:51:29 - Leo Laporte
no, let me explain it. We don't need to target our audience, because it's targeted by the nature of the show, the people who listen to this show. You notice, all of our ads are about ai, technology, that kind of stuff.

1:51:40 - Jeff Jarvis
So we are it's environment advertising.

1:51:43 - Leo Laporte
It's environmental advertising that's good, we love, right, uh, and I'm fortunate that I can work in an industry that used to be the whole industry of magazines, but that went away when the internet came along and the data about the user became more valuable than the environment. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's ruined, that's made it very hard to do what we do killed the magazine.

1:52:01 - Paris Martineau
That's what I'm saying is I, as a consumer, don't want to be opting in to. In situations I can, I don't want to opt in and I specifically want to opt out of being part of this uh, targeted data environment. Would rather have it be environmentally conscious ads. I'd rather have the ad I'm seeing on instagram be, I guess, related to whatever content is coming above and below it, or whenever I go to Wired Magazine, I'd rather have the ads be related to tech, because I'm on a Wired Magazine.

I know that's probably a foolish and archaic way to think about it, but I take the painstaking steps to make that the reality I live in, because that's the choices I want to make as a consumer.

1:52:45 - Leo Laporte
I've always wanted my email printed out and delivered to me by the United States Postal Service. That's what I've always wanted.

1:52:52 - Paris Martineau
Are you ready for that?

1:52:53 - Leo Laporte
Are you it could Ecom the $40 million United States Postal Service project to send email on paper.

1:53:02 - Jeff Jarvis
There's your email. So my father, when he was alive, uh, they would send us, they would, they would I.

1:53:09 - Leo Laporte
I thought I signed up for that accidentally and then the personal service, yeah, yeah, and I didn't keep it very long a congressional report predicted that two-thirds or more of the mail stream could be handled electronically and the volume of mail is likely to peak in 1992. So the post office said we will. We will find a way to live in the email world. Ecom 1982.

1:53:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Ecom was born you want to know what's really scary about this, though. What Is that? Every letter you get, the post office takes a picture of the front and back Right, and it is now being used to find undocumented immigrants. Oh, that's terrible. So if you even receive mail, if the name is Bob Jones, and then they want to say where's Bob Jones, and when Bob Jones receives a letter, then they now know the address at which Bob Jones received that letter. Oof.

1:54:07 - Paris Martieau
There's a lot of things I wish would stop. You have a right to privacy of sealed letters.

1:54:12 - Jeff Jarvis
How do we stop this? You complain to your politicians and you haven't passed laws to forbid that Argument I've long made about the mails. Postcards have never been private because your carrier could read it. I hope they had a nice time and I wish you were there. But sealed mail first class mail required a warrant that extended only to that technology of the mails. It did not extend thus to chat or email or any other private communication, and that's why the rest of our communications are so vulnerable uh, when we take a break.

1:54:50 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna take a little break and then I have something for you, paris, you're watching for me something, for you, a gift a story, a story intelligent machines with paris martineau at parisnyc the best url ever. Also an acronym jeff jarvis at jeffjarviscom not an acronym, he's the author of the gutenberg but I don't want to think what jeff would stand for and the way, if we weave, I'll ask chat gpt, if you let me. I'm sure it'll come up with something I can hear the tree falling now how often does it happen paris?

you take the subway into town, but then you'd like to ride a city bike home, but did you bring your helmet with you? No, you didn't. You need the hovding airbag helmet. Oh yeah, this is a helmet you wear around. Is this your advertiser. No, oh, what Great advertiser.

1:55:47 - Paris Martineau
If you decide you wish to ride a bike.

1:55:50 - Leo Laporte
You just pull on the little tabs and the airbag. Oh, look at that, it saves your life. You don't even have to pull the tabs.

1:56:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Isn't that amazing, you look like a, like a bird. Has it been tested? We talked about this on the show like it was eight years ago we did.

1:56:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I was like I've seen videos of this, not it was banned in sweden and the company went out of business, unfortunately, hofting Hofting. Hofting, it's the airbag helmet. Oh, did we do this already?

1:56:23 - Paris Martineau
No years ago.

1:56:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Literally like eight years ago. We did it I mean, I wasn't Before it was banned.

1:56:28 - Leo Laporte
You were born, yeah right.

1:56:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

1:56:32 - Leo Laporte
You know what the most hated?

1:56:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Wait, wait, wait. How old were you, Paris, when the show started?

1:56:37 - Leo Laporte
This how old were you, Paris, when the show started.

1:56:38 - Paris Martineau
When did the show start?

1:56:40 - Leo Laporte
Well, let me look. I don't know. It wasn't I Am. I mean, you were born when I Am. Yeah, but when it was Twig the very first episode of this Week in Google was August 1st 2009. So how old were you, paris? She was alive, I know but how old were you?

1:56:57 - Jeff Jarvis
I was alive.

1:57:01 - Paris Martineau
Do you want to know?

1:57:02 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, I want to know.

1:57:04 - Leo Laporte
Uh, 14, I can't do the math and you listen to every episode and that's how you grew up to be big and strong and smart that's true you thought gina trepani was a perfect role model and this. So what do you think? The most hated text message in the world is actually paris. Don't look at this story just in your own experience. What's the text message you don't want to get? Not all. It's not a long one. Call me. Yeah, that's a bad one. How about just the letter k? We need to.

1:57:35 - Paris Martineau
We need k we need to talk or just a question mark.

1:57:39 - Leo Laporte
Those are my question marks terrible, I think, question marks. I had an editor for a long time.

1:57:44 - Paris Martineau
That, uh, he would always go over all of his edits on the phone and, like normally, people would put them in googlecom comments, but if he really had a long thing. So you just highlight some of your text and just put a question mark and I'd be like Jesus Christ. What did I do?

1:58:02 - Leo Laporte
That's just terrible. Oh, this is, this is. Is it schadenfreude, schadenfreude, is it kismet? Remember the boring apes? What were they called the bored?

1:58:17 - Paris Martineau
apes, boring apes, bored apes yacht club.

1:58:19 - Leo Laporte
Bored apes and remember the cryptounks and Kevin Rose. He had a million dollar Crypto Punk. Remember that Yep Crypto Punks, which also owns the Bored Apes Yacht Club, is being sold to a non-profit.

1:58:32 - Jeff Jarvis
How is that?

1:58:33 - Leo Laporte
good for society. It's a non-profit. Well, probably because they just can't make any profit it's a no, it's the infinite node foundation dedicated to preserving digital art. Oh, oh, okay. So several of those crypto punks and uh board api club sold for millions of dollars. There was one in 2022 with his purchase for more than 2323 million worth of ETH Loser Wonder what it's worth today.

1:59:05 - Jeff Jarvis
How much?

1:59:05 - Leo Laporte
was this sold for, does it say? They don't say because probably it was a very small number.

1:59:10 - Jeff Jarvis
What an irresponsible purchase.

1:59:14 - Leo Laporte
Yuga Labs still is one of the biggest holders of CryptoPunks. Labs still is one of the biggest holders of crypto punks and, like all other crypto punks nft holders, will retain the right to its crypto punk characters under the license. Congratulations, your digital icon.

1:59:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Jerky crypto. Things go to line 121.

1:59:32 - Leo Laporte
oh line 121, the home of jerky crypto things the home of jerky crypto things, crypto boys.

1:59:44 - Paris Martineau
Well, that's my, that's my line. Yeah, that's a classic jeffism. Also, what was the piece about the most hated text? Did we just move on past that? It's okay, it's okay although I mean, how do you guys feel about k?

1:59:55 - Leo Laporte
question mark.

1:59:56 - Paris Martineau
Worse k is not so bad just the letter k is really aggressive, is it? I mean if someone, if you like, okay, if you are messaging someone like here's what I'm doing on this project. The status of this is this it'll be ready at this time, and then they just respond. Okay, just the letter I do. Is this bad?

2:00:14 - Leo Laporte
great, tell me if this is bad, because I'm your grandpa and I want to do bad things. I put put the thumb the apple thumb on it.

2:00:21 - Paris Martineau
That's fine, that's perfectly neutral. That's better than a K Significantly Leaps and bounds. Why? The only thing worse than okay. So K is bad. The only thing worse is K. And then a period that's you just shot someone with a gun level Like that's not okay. K full stop. K full stop is I'm coming to your house to commit a crime. That level of hostilities, the thumbs up is like just a perfectly neutral.

2:00:50 - Leo Laporte
Got it Like it's yeah, lisa and I do that all the time.

2:00:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Totally good, isn't the K, the equivalent of the marital fine?

2:01:00 - Paris Martineau
Yes, it's like if someone asks you how you're doing and you're like fine, fine, period, it's like that. That's, that's the same sort of tone. K is a better version of k. Could be okay or okay spelled out okay, kk, all friendly even kk would be better. Kk is significantly better.

2:01:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, nothing's worse than KDOT. It's cool.

2:01:22 - Paris Martineau
KDOT is rough, kdot is like. You need to respond Like the polite thing to do is like is everything okay If, like, someone sends KDOT to you?

2:01:30 - Leo Laporte
My favorite thing is did you have a stroke? All right, the tech guys are fighting. Literally, says the New York Times. There, tech guys are fighting. Literally, says the New York Times. There's a tech guy who's literally fighting Sweaty and awful. But we knew this, because weren't Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk going to have a game?

2:01:47 - Paris Martineau
No, but I think they actually fought, that's what this one's about these people?

2:01:51 - Leo Laporte
But they were going to fight ETH Denver, no, but they didn't because it would probably there's something.

2:01:57 - Paris Martineau
Securities fraud, they're like a securities fraud problem. I guess they fight or no. Like it's a securities issue. Like how do you, if you're the heads of multiple public companies, what do you say to your stock, your shareholders, if your ceo and the public figurehead at the front of your company is about to go in a brawl?

2:02:18 - Leo Laporte
you mean? You mean you mean like this that's mark zuckerberg on the left, gosh, and I think that's burke on the right, I don't know, but I might be on the right, but yeah on the right. Yeah, uh, mark's big into uh jujitsu. This is uh marcello garcia jujitsu and he's, and apparently he fights in the Jiu-Jitsu Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Actually, rene Ritchie was a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, I think.

2:02:50 - Paris Martieau
That's all grappling, so he's not going to get like a black eye or anything?

2:02:52 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, they're not punching each other in the face.

2:02:59 - Jeff Jarvis
My only point is crypto, hate crypto if, even if crypto were brilliant, the brand of it has been so ruined by these jerks I don't want to show this to paris, but I am I've already clicked on your uh oh I.

2:03:17 - Paris Martineau
I need to hear all of this. I watched every single.

2:03:20 - Leo Laporte
Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him and myself.

2:03:26 - Jeff Jarvis
God, how have I not seen this? You could have had a Guardian piece, paris, you could have, I could have.

2:03:31 - Leo Laporte
Susie Cree is an Australian GP. What is that? I don't know.

2:03:35 - Jeff Jarvis
General practitioner.

2:03:36 - Paris Martineau
Honestly, that's incredibly impressive to do in three months. That's like more than didn't you watch most I watched? No, I watched 30 nick cage films in one month, or tried to one nick cage film a day. He has like 150 movies yeah, here's the chart that's like a lot here's the scoreboard.

2:03:56 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so she actually made a grid on cardboard. I need to zoom in on this and she had a grid. So on the x-axis it's trash, fine, and masterpiece. On the right axis is did I have a good time watching it? Bad time? Okay, the best. So there's like three movies in the trash, but the best I don't know. Can you read what the movies are? I'm trying to get there it's too blurry. We may never know. This is not there's no movies.

Bad time masterpiece, in fact. It really clusters around the upper left hand corner, doesn't it? Uh, oh, oh. And then the color of the paper slips is the decade of the movie.

2:04:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yeah, there's a lot so fine and k are a lot of the movies harris, I think I found your soulmate I think this woman is you in australia oh, she's got a quote from vampire's kiss.

2:04:54 - Paris Martineau
I do think that she's me in australia, because I was. I was scared when I saw the trailer Vampire's Kiss that she would be panning it, because I think Vampire's Kiss is phenomenal. What is the quote? How can you mention you have a quote from Vampire's Kiss in your arm and not oh, it's a tat, oh my yeah. And don't say what the quote is Well.

2:05:14 - Jeff Jarvis
look her up online. Maybe she has it on Instagram.

2:05:23 - Paris Martineau
It's on the back of her arm, where it's often visible to my patients.

2:05:25 - Leo Laporte
I'm not going to a doctor with a quote from nick cage's vampire kiss on his arm, on her arm up in the upper right hand corner, she has adaptation which I think is correct bringing up the dead pig raised.

2:05:39 - Paris Martineau
In arizona, peggy sue got married, which is correct face off should be moved a couple inches to the right and be in masterpiece. Uh, because it is a masterpiece, uh, I would kind of disagree with.

2:05:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, I guess if you're talking about so she watched more than one a day for three months yes, she definitely had to.

2:05:55 - Paris Martineau
Um, wild at heart is also in a good, correct place.

Uh, I, I didn't like bad lieutenant, port of call new orleans, but I do really like saying bad lieutenant, port of call new orleans, so perhaps I'll give her that just saying the title, you mean yeah, it's just, it's just incredibly funny to be watching a nick cage film where he's being a bad lieutenant port of call new orleans and then every time he's acting out, you're like man, that guy's a bad lieutenant port of call new orleans and then every time he's acting out, you're like man, that guy's a bad lieutenant part of call new orleans. It doesn't get old. Throughout the three hours.

2:06:24 - Leo Laporte
You can say it again, and again you, you really can. He gives you a lot of opportunities to be like I really tempted to emulate you and now and watch them all nick vember will happen again this year.

2:06:35 - Paris Martieau
I'll be doing it for the next couple of years because there's a lot of Nick Cage, so you're going to get through them all.

2:06:40 - Paris Martineau
Eventually.

2:06:41 - Paris Martieau
You know what his next movie is Paris. Have you heard about this?

2:06:45 - Paris Martineau
Oh, he's doing Teen Juice.

2:06:47 - Paris Martieau
Is he playing Mario? No, he's playing John Madden in the Madden biopic.

2:06:53 - Paris Martineau
Oh, my oh wow.

2:06:54 - Leo Laporte
He's also in a. This is a problem. Hollywood discovered the fat suit a couple of uh years ago yeah, and now you're seeing brendan fraser in the fat suit. You saw the penguin no, benjamin fraser was actually fat, I think well, he wasn't that fat, not that, not that he was fat, yeah, not that, it's not that fat. And then the penguin. Well, who was that? That was, um, I can't remember his name russell crowe, no, anyway, one of them ask your oh no, I'm not allowed to use it anymore I can't use it.

2:07:26 - Paris Martineau
I really I do agree with a lot of this woman's takes on it. It's just there's so many good ones birdie, national treasure, con air, con air is correct who plays the penguin in the new tv adaptation see where's the rock?

2:07:45 - Leo Laporte
paris that's a great question. Are you excited they're bringing back alcatraz? In the new tv adaptation, the batman the character of penguin is portrayed by colin farrell if you have more questions about the show or the character, feel free to ask you guys trying ai when we have chat right here. Who's smarter than all of that?

yeah leo doesn't like the chat they're humans, oh, oh, they're humans. They're often wrong benito yeah they're off rock. I can't. I my mouse isn't working. Yes, I'm very. You know it's funny, I'm. It's completely disabled. If I can't use my mouse, I have too many screens. Did you see the new wood? By the way, the name of the wood honestly super wood should be the name of an ed treatment, not actual wood you should be able to buy super with the gas super wood at the gas station.

I want a bottle of super wood and some all-night energy drink and some uh perky jerky in in 2018, a scientist at university of maryland figured out a way to take regular, everyday wood and make it stronger than steel. He said okay, but it is is it?

2:09:01 - Paris Martineau
is it wood still?

2:09:03 - Leo Laporte
well, it's whatever it is. Anyway, he had to refine it.

2:09:06 - Jeff Jarvis
A lot of people like artificial intelligence is intelligence. You know nothing's real.

2:09:09 - Leo Laporte
Paris, yeah he said, uh. He said well, this is amazing, but I'm a university professor, I don't know what to do about it. So he spent the next few years refining it, reducing the time time this is from TechCrunch Reducing the time it took to take the material for more than a week to make to a few hours. He licensed the technology to a company now called InventWood and the world's first batches of super wood will be available at gas stations this summer. Right now, coming out of this first of a kind commercial plant it's a smaller plant. We're focused on skin applications oh, not on the human skin, but the skin of the house. Okay, eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. I guess that's how contractors talk.

90 of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of a building. So making out of wood is better. It starts with regular timber. Maybe you didn't know this, but timber, according to chat beach hbt, is primarily composed of cellulose, and cellulose, yes, the goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. The cellulose nanocrystal crystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber. So he treats it with quote, food industry chemicals to modify the structure of the wood, then compresses it to increase the hydrogen bonds, we might densify the material 4x and you think, oh, it'll be four times as strong because it has four times the fiber. Actually it's 10 times stronger because of all the extra bonds it's a little.

2:10:37 - Jeff Jarvis
it's interesting to me, wonk that I am is that it's the reverse of that process that made mass media possible by making wood into paper. Ah, they had to ruin the bonds of cellulose.

2:10:55 - Leo Laporte
So this is going to make a material that's 50% more tensile strength than steel, with a strength to weight ratio 10 times better. So it's really not as strong as steel, exactly, but close Class A fire rated. It's highly resistant, flame resistant to rot and pests, and if you impregnate it with some, with some polymer, you can use it for decking, just to replace our entire roof because we listened to the salesperson to do the spray in insulation in the attic.

2:11:27 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, no, no, no, you can't do that did your roof pop off? It rotted oh, oh, no, no yes, everybody in all the home shows. I said, oh, this is a wonderful way and, yeah, it's a mistake. And you think that ChatGPT makes mistakes? We got a many thousand dollar mistake there.

2:11:47 - Leo Laporte
I bet, if you'd asked Well.

2:11:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm not sure. So you know what, when a really big story happened, when war breaks out, you know what they would say in the newsroom what Get out the wood? Oh, which is why the biggest type, was too big for metal it was was literally wood type.

2:12:06 - Leo Laporte
War would be wood type. We're gonna take a little break and then come back with your picks of the week. I've got one this week. You're watching intelligent machines with jeff jarvis and paris martineau. We're so glad you're here. Hope you heard our interview in which I got roasted by two vegans.

2:12:23 - Paris Martineau
He got roasted and he got really defensive about it, but now he's finding his footing again. I'm not owned. I'm not owned.

2:12:35 - Leo Laporte
You did not own me. I stand by my opinion that AI is fantastico did you know that's still in the dictionary.

2:12:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Is that still pwned?

2:12:45 - Paris Martineau
yes yeah before we move on the next segment, my two final thoughts on this. Nick cage, uh graph is one bonito. I can't find the rock which leads me to believe it's in the middle quadrant, which uh seems wrong. Um, second, I somewhat uh question her taste, despite agreeing with a lot of her tops, because zandali is not all the way at the bottom and that is the worst film I've ever seen. But also I haven't seen all of nick cage's famously bad films. So maybe it's being bumped up because things can get worse but I really doubt it.

2:13:16 - Leo Laporte
Did you actively like try to watch his better films, like I'm not?

2:13:20 - Paris Martineau
I did because it was like my first pass on it, so I watched. I mean, I started in like the 90s and he starts to get once he goes into pyramid debt in. You know, the uh 2000s is when his films get kind of bad because he's got to get out of the pyramid debt. So I hadn't, I hadn't gone there yet, but you know has he commented on nick fember?

2:13:40 - Leo Laporte
no no but, he should like he, nick cage is paying attention to this show.

2:13:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Hey, no, no, I well, it's not. It's not just the show.

2:13:47 - Paris Martineau
Nick member is a phenomenon right oh it's not just you, I don't know this woman was doing it. No, she did this over the last three months I mean all right, all right, so nick member is allegedly, I think Nick Vemper is just me oh wow, I feel honored history yeah, it is history. This is going to be a national holiday one day yeah, yeah, a whole month um the first one you're watching intelligent machines.

2:14:14 - Leo Laporte
Like I said, jeff Jarvis, paris Martin, pick of the week time.

2:14:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Let's start with paris you still got one more ad leo yeah, you got ads crap we should get the ai to do this one um in fact, I thought the last time you didn't even read it. You didn't do one, you just started talking about okay, well, I did.

2:14:35 - Leo Laporte
I just kind of did stuff, I don't. I told you, my mouse ain't working I can't get to anything wait a minute.

2:14:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Maybe I can press this button and make this. Did you forget to charge it? No, it's benito. Can you drive over there and fix his mouth?

2:14:52 - Leo Laporte
no, it's not, it's it's. I can fix it. I just can't fix it during a show. Let let's put it that way. This episode of Intelligent Machines is brought to you by this little thing over here. It's about the size of a USB external hard drive and it's the best darn thing ever the Thinkst Canary that there is a honeypot. A honeypot that could be deployed in minutes. And if somebody is inside my network snooping it around, they're going to look at it and say, hey, that looks pretty valuable. I better try to attack that Synology NAS or fake internal SSH server. In fact, even better, I can use it to create files that I spread out all over the place, even in my cloud files, files like on my google drive or my microsoft 365 on azure. Put them there and if somebody tries to open it, I'm going to get an alert no false alerts, just the alerts that matter. And you get it any way you want. You can text message, email, uh uh, slack. You can get web hooks. They have an api syslog. Of course. It's fantastic because these thinks canaries and the thinks canary tokens you create don't look vulnerable, they look valuable, they look like something a bad guy cannot resist. Just choose a profile for your thinks canary device, register it with the hosted console for monitoring and notifications and then you sit back and wait. You're not going to get bugged, unless there is an attacker who is inside, has breached your network. As an inside is snooping around or maybe worse, a malicious insider or some other adversary they make, they can't help it. They make themselves known by accessing your think skin area and then the jig is up because you know they're there. You can see exactly what they did to try to break in. You can see what ip address they're using. All of that, in fact.

I've had this thing now for years. We've been doing these as I think, for eight years. It has only gone off once and it was back in the old studio. One of our hosts was testing a western digital external hard drive, plugged it into the network and for some reason it went out and it looked at every other device in the network and I got a ping and I said, whoa, wait a minute. We uh, it said where it is. I went and I tracked it down. We took it out and we said not, never again. So I know it works, I love it. You will know it works too. Let me. Let me explain how this works.

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Now, if you use the code twit in the how Did you Hear About Us box, you're going to get 10% off for life. Okay, you can always return your ThinkScanaries. They've got a two month money back guarantee for a full refund, so there's no risk. I should point out that in the eight years we've been doing ads for these, this wonderful ThinkScanary, no one has ever, ever asked for a refund. Once you get them, you go oh yeah, how did we live without them?

Visit canarytools slash twit. Enter the code twit in the how did you hear about us box and if you want to see how it's not just me how other people feel, if you go to canarytools slash love canarytools slash love you'll see a bunch of posts, social media reviews, all sorts of stuff from some pretty big names in the business, a lot of cso's saying they can't live without it. You won't want to live without it once you try it. Canarytools slash twit. Don't forget the offer code twit. We thank them so much for supporting intelligent machines. Now it's time for paris martineau's pick of the week so you know, I got a.

2:18:37 - Paris Martineau
I got a real classic paris pick this week. Uh, last friday I went to my local library. I went to go pick up some books, was checking out the big uh table full of flyers, as one does as they're exiting the library, and I saw an interesting flyer that said tomorrow, 1 pm, uncle tony's reptile show, and I, a naturally curious person, couldn't catch this. I was like paris bait. I was like I can't let this go unchecked and so I texted everyone I know in the air and was like tomorrow, 1 pm, uncle tony's reptile show. Question mark showed up at 12 50 because I wanted to be there early. Me and my friends were perhaps not, perhaps we were certainly the only childless adults there.

2:19:23 - Emily M. Bender
Oh, it's for kids, they were not library employees.

2:19:27 - Paris Martineau
But God, did we have a great time they had. They promised that they would have between five and seven reptiles, which I also thought was a very interesting range to give. They had seven. You don't want too many. You don't want too many you don't want too many, and just look at this one video.

2:19:41 - Leo Laporte
Is this Uncle Tony?

2:19:43 - Paris Martineau
No, this is one of Uncle Tony's people. This was A turtle. It was an African snapping turtle. We met a bunch of snakes. One of them was named Bamboo. I took a photo with it. If you scroll down there's a photo of me with the snake, or Coconut was her name. There were a couple different snakes. That's my friend Jane.

2:20:06 - Leo Laporte
That's an albino snake it was an albino snake.

2:20:09 - Paris Martineau
She was really cute.

2:20:11 - Leo Laporte
Was Uncle Tony a little surprised to have all these adults?

2:20:16 - Paris Martineau
There were three. There were casual, three adults that were not with children. There's all these kids there were maybe like 40 children there. We maxed out the capacity of the room.

2:20:25 - TikTok
There were so many kids.

2:20:28 - Paris Martineau
They had such a great time. We met let's see millipedes. We met four different kinds of snakes. There was a toad there. We had a great time. This is just my plug to say check out your local library and if you're in the tri-state area and want a cool kids birthday party idea, check out uncle tony's reptile show. They, the kids, had a great time. I mean, I guess it could be honestly, it would be a great adult birthday party.

2:20:53 - Leo Laporte
I might do this for my birthday one year if you ever come to petaluma, we'll take you to the local high school where the Petaluma Wildlife Museum is. They have a giant albina snake and all sorts of. They have a cockroach this big you could put on your hand. If you like this kind of thing, I got the place for you here in Petaluma it was just delightful.

2:21:12 - Paris Martineau
It was just.

2:21:12 - Leo Laporte
You know, I walk and I was like I don't know what this could be like, you know I love it that you go to stuff like that, that you just and you see a poster on a tree and you go, and I was like listen, you can't.

2:21:23 - Paris Martineau
I was like, how often am I going to see a poster that simply says tomorrow, 1 pm, uncle tony's reptile show?

2:21:29 - Leo Laporte
not often is that all it said. It didn't have any more information. I mean it had a uh.

2:21:33 - Paris Martineau
It had it said uh, come hang out with Uncle Tony's scaly five to seven of Uncle Tony's scaly friends. Space is limited. I believe was the entirety of the thing.

2:21:49 - Leo Laporte
That's fantastic.

2:21:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris. There was a request last week. Yes, For a Paris tree update.

2:21:57 - Leo Laporte
How's it going with the?

2:21:58 - Paris Martineau
clipping Guys. It's tree clipping season. I clip trees today. It's time to where I've got my gardening shears with me anytime I'm walking out. I think this period, right now, over the last like three weeks or so, is right, as the trees are growing enough that they are a major impediment to walking, and so if I do not, if I'm walking somewhere and I don't have my shears with me, I encounter like three to five trees that I'm like dang, I should have trimmed because it's impossible walk around them. But now I'm doing it legitimately, so it's great to have my first challenge to you and said show me your license.

No but there were some people, I think. Yesterday, as I was, I was walking home from a late night drinks thing and I was carrying a thing of food and there was a giant tree, it was really in the way and so I just picked it up and was kind of trimming it on the side and two people did look at me kind of weird, but they didn't ask any questions. New York, did you?

2:22:54 - Leo Laporte
shout New York. It's okay, I got a license.

2:22:57 - Paris Martineau
I was going to. That's a very New York thing to do I was like I'll pull out my ear, I'll pull out my AirPod and stop listening to a podcast. If someone wants to engage me on this.

2:23:05 - Leo Laporte
It's okay, I'm licensed.

2:23:07 - Paris Martineau
I'm licensed. I'm licensed to prune, don't worry about it.

2:23:12 - Leo Laporte
Very New York. It's a Woody Allen movie right into the happen.

2:23:16 - Paris Martineau
And now I know that when I prune the trees, not to do what I had been doing in past seasons, which was kind of put the prune clippings in the soil beds around the tree, but to bundle them and place them near the nearest trash can, because then the garbage men will pick them up.

2:23:34 - Leo Laporte
The garbage men collect them, the garbage people, the garbage people, the garbage people collect them. Wait a minute. The sanitation men collect them, the garbage people the garbage people. The garbage people collect them, the sanitation workers, my daughter who had a whole comedy bit about the garbage men and I said, honey, in new york they call them sanitation workers.

2:23:50 - Paris Martineau
You gotta get, you gotta they do, and it's honestly very hard to be a sanitation, oh it's hard, but it's good money, it's a. It's fantastic money, you gotta take a long test. There's a really long wait list to even be able to take the test.

2:24:02 - Leo Laporte
I think you've considered this, I mean.

2:24:04 - Paris Martineau
I just think the New York sanitation has one of the most interesting social media presences of all time. And so for a while I was in the New York sanitation subreddit, but then I realized it was really just for workers and worker concerns and people wanting to be a sanitation worker and there's a lot of people with questions about social media has been very good for New York city.

2:24:22 - Leo Laporte
There's the guy who makes the signs. He's got a great Instagram. It's amazing. I mean, the all of the stuff that happens in the city is is really amazing.

2:24:29 - Paris Martineau
They now do like bespoke drops of custom New York city signs. It's been like a source of revenue for the city because you can get, like I don't know, some weird name on a sign.

2:24:43 - Leo Laporte
Here. They just steal them from the. The street name has been stolen from the sign outside our house many times and people can't find our house. I said don't you have GPS? They said yeah, but there's no street sign.

I thought you don't really need that anymore Well we can't talk about this because it docks you, but I bet it's because you have a funny name for a street name or something that is, or somebody's family in the neighborhood hardwood court is that funny? Uh, super wood court. Neilfun, I've talked about this before. I can't't remember what I showed, but this guy just likes making fun internet stuff. He's obviously a pretty talented web designer. His latest is Internet Road Trip. It takes a street view. I knew you would like this. They're voting online right. There's 907 drivers online and they are going to pick. There's a chat going on. Use an FMm radio. Let me just turn on the uh, turn on the radio. We can listen to some music while we go. Uh, let's go driving down. Uh, boden boden. Oh, I voted. I have to wait till the votes are tallied. Picking option in two seconds. Where are we?

2:25:53 - Paris Martineau
going. I like that someone in the chat says we can make it for the great state of maine, uh I don't know actually how this works.

2:26:01 - Leo Laporte
Apparently we're voting on which direction to go. I don't know. Yes, that's, oh, that's great yeah, yeah uh, we've gone 548 miles so far I don't know what. What's the coffee cup? Oh, you buy neil a cup of coffee. Isn't that sweet. How do I get out of that? I don't want to buy him a cup of coffee. Anyway, if you haven't done stuff at Neilfun, you should absolutely go there. There is such great stuff on Neilfun. He has so much. He's got talent, my friend's talent. Look where they've gone. They've driven.

2:26:36 - Jeff Jarvis
It's like my grandfather. Well, yeah, I guess this is what happens.

2:26:38 - Leo Laporte
They came all the way up the coast from.

2:26:42 - Emily M. Bender
Boston. Look at that but they're still in Maine?

2:26:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they started in downtown Boston.

2:26:49 - Jeff Jarvis
So who caused the U-turn there? That's what I want to know. These people are fighting. That was a concerted action.

2:26:55 - Leo Laporte
See, here's your choice. You can go left, right or straight ahead.

2:26:58 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that's the thing this is always going to be open to. If everybody in this chat gets on this website right now, we could go a couple of miles.

2:27:07 - Leo Laporte
Let's just go down the road. Please help us. There's 940 drivers out here.

2:27:12 - Paris Martineau
I like somebody in the chat says Canada better start running because we're getting here we come, we're coming, we'll be there in four to five days.

2:27:24 - Leo Laporte
Neilfun if you. If that doesn't get you, there's so many other things you could do and play there from here. Can't get there from here. This is a click, a sim stimulation clicker. I don't know what it's doing. It's giving me bonuses for stimp. I don't understand how this works.

2:27:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Anyway, jeff jarvis, your pick of the week well, I could mention that senate dems are being told to go on twitch and snapchat, which, I apologize. Is snapchat still around? Yeah, yeah to do?

2:27:50 - Paris Martineau
yeah, no people really like, the kids like the kids like it?

2:27:54 - Jeff Jarvis
the youngs, yeah, but instead, you probably saw, this video was very viral last week, but this is a test for Paris.

2:28:00 - Leo Laporte
Oh, to test your language proficiency. Yes, this is the nerdy I didn't see this but I will, Good I'm glad you didn't.

2:28:06 - Jeff Jarvis
A nerdy professor came to talk at Language Day at a high school and let's just turn the sound up and listen to him. It's only two minutes he's going to talk Gen. Alpha slang Turn the sound.

2:28:15 - TikTok
Good morning everyone. There we go. It's a true honor to be here at Westtown High School for Languages Week. Your school invited me to give a guest lecture about the importance of learning languages, but it occurred to me that all of you are already in some sense multilingual, whether you realize it or not, and that's because you speak the Gen Alpha dialect of English, a language so distinct that I, an aging 34-year-old millennial, genuinely cannot understand it, or at least couldn't understand it before. I spent weeks immersed in TikTok videos studying your dialect to partial fluency. And because nothing drives home the importance of learning languages better than hearing someone else try to speak your own, I'm going to try to deliver the rest of this speech in your very own native tongue.

2:29:13 - Paris Martineau
Jan Alpa. I love the way the people are cringing physically. All right, let's see Go away.

2:29:21 - Jeff Jarvis
But they applaud for the spirit.

2:29:23 - Paris Martineau
yes, All right good.

2:29:27 - TikTok
Of course, to facilitate the comprehension of my fellow elders on YouTube watching this as a video, I'll also be including subtitles in standard English, so without further ado. It's low-key, a huge W to be vibing here at Westtown High School for Languages Week.

2:29:45 - Paris Martineau
Yep got that.

2:29:48 - Leo Laporte
It's low-key vibing, it's casually.

2:29:50 - Paris Martineau
A huge win to be hanging here.

2:29:56 - TikTok
Now, I know it's getting to Lulu, but it's a true gift to speak in such skibbity brain rods. I'll put the fries in the bag in just a second. Do you actually have a message here?

2:30:10 - Paris Martineau
thank you, do you, do you uh, say that I'll put the fries in the no, I'll put the fries in the bag, but I I don't say that, but what it means, is it originally, I believe, stemmed as an insult, uh, kind of insinuating that someone is a mcdonald's worker? Uh, basically, if you're trying to say, get on with it, get with the point, do your job. You're like just put the fries in the bag, normie, or something like that, you know I get it, I get it okay so there's a part two.

2:30:38 - Leo Laporte
If you, if you click on the user there, uh there is not a part two if I click on the user, but let's try it anyway yes, sunny, so funny, haha.

2:30:47 - Paris Martineau
I think the actual the, the, the real test of cringe is go ahead I was saying the real test of cringe is you guys trying to figure out how tiktok works?

2:30:59 - TikTok
no cap. I was dead ass pressed about understanding this language. But all this is very simple, the drip. So I wouldn't get aired by your generation.

2:31:08 - Jeff Jarvis
I learned drip here high key.

2:31:10 - TikTok
Really. Gen alpha slang is just memes and brain rods. But on god, it's giving a linguistic glow of core IRLs.

2:31:18 - Paris Martineau
Yep. Does this make sense, Stephen you?

2:31:20 - Leo Laporte
know what's funny? The girls understand it. The boys are baffled.

2:31:27 - TikTok
Literally shifting. The English meta Language evolves because you're constantly coming up with new ways.

2:31:34 - Leo Laporte
The boy is going. What the hell is he saying?

2:31:36 - TikTok
And the girls are like how I don't know, I understand this perfectly fine. The girls are like how I don't know.

2:31:40 - Paris Martieau
I understand this perfectly fine. Actually I do too. I'll be honest.

2:31:44 - Leo Laporte
I haven't worked with Paris now for a year or two.

2:31:47 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say we've taught you guys drip. Yeah, I know all this stuff.

2:31:51 - Leo Laporte
Except for put the flies in the bag. That's a good one. I like that.

2:31:55 - TikTok
People around the world give the deets.

2:31:59 - Leo Laporte
Give the like that people around the world.

2:32:00 - TikTok
Give the deets if the deets I mean I've been saying that for allowing you to catch dubs across cultures, connect deeper with the squad and stand new perspectives that would otherwise leave you ghosted language squad up with the fam, but you know I feel like he's mixing in jen.

2:32:15 - Paris Martineau
you gotta give the guy credit, yeah no, I think that's a fun little speech.

2:32:18 - Leo Laporte
Good try, it's a good try.

2:32:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Nice guy.

2:32:28 - Paris Martieau
Well, paris give us a review of it. In your generation speech she's Gen Z, though right, that's not the same generation.

2:32:36 - Paris Martineau
I'm mixed in all of this.

2:32:36 - Leo Laporte
so I kind of understand it. I can't believe you knew put the fries in the bag. I don't understand. I understand it, but I can't believe you put the fries in the bag.

2:32:40 - Paris Martineau
I was.

2:32:40 - Leo Laporte
I don't know how I know, put the fries in the bag, but I did.

2:32:43 - Paris Martineau
That's obscure.

2:32:44 - Leo Laporte
Put the fries in the bag.

2:32:45 - Paris Martineau
Big up, put down, okay, okay, put the fries in the bag Busta.

2:32:52 - Leo Laporte
It's a lot of games, too many. Actually it's a lot of gamers speak too, yeah.

2:32:55 - Paris Martineau
Just a lot of gamers speak too. Yeah, I wouldn't say to correct Burke, I wouldn't say it's respectful, it's definitely like a put the fries in the bag, it's derogatory.

2:33:04 - Leo Laporte
It's not respectful, it's derogatory. It's saying you're a fast food worker, yeah. Yeah. I would see what Burke was saying, but I can't. That's just definitely not. I can't see nothing. I'm lucky I was able to click that link. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes this thrilling, gripping edition of Intelligent Machines. Thank you, Jeff and Benito, for getting Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on the show there. Book the AI con Never invite them back. Okay, I'm just saying Never, ever. No, no, I'm kidding he doesn't mean that I don't mean it.

It's good to have you got to hear all the points of view, and they made some excellent points. I'm gonna feel guilty now when I use perplexity, but I'm gonna still use it it's. I really don't know. Anthony did all the back-end work on that he did that, he did the book and I don't know about this I, you should swallow it the, the b if I swallow it, then I can't get rid of it.

2:33:58 - Paris Martineau
It'll be with me forever but the fries in the bag leo it's in the bag, man, but the fries in the bag.

2:34:07 - Leo Laporte
I think we have a show no cab thank you, paris. Uh, parisnyc, hire this woman so she doesn't have to go to tony's reptile show anymore I will be.

2:34:19 - Paris Martineau
If you hire me, I'll be going to the nassau county reptile exhibition.

2:34:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, baby yeah, the big one, the big show I want to see those big zards the big zards. See, I understand your, your, your elite. Speak jeff jarvis, formerly professor of internet. Well, he's always professor emeritus of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, craig. Newmark At CUNY. I feel rebellion in the air. I don't know why. I feel rebellion in the air.

2:34:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, the whole chat room was voting against you.

2:34:53 - Leo Laporte
Well, I don't pay attention to them. They're just a small sampling of the overall audience.

2:34:56 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, you paid attention to them, they're the they're the just a small sampling of the overall, of the overall audience yeah, yeah, you paid attention to one nasty emailer hey guys you know what you should do if you want the craig dumark theme back, leave me okay, email leo or, if you want to be helpful while doing it, leave a bunch of five-star reviews of this podcast and your favorite podcasting app and if we get enough of those that then say in the review that you want Craig Newmark back. Then Leo will be forced to do it.

2:35:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Can you read that nasty letter to us um it?

2:35:33 - Leo Laporte
wasn't. I don't think we want to. Okay, well, maybe it was nasty, I don't know. Let me look and see if I can find it. I have a lot of mail. If I can find it I will read it to you uh search on newark I just have to say well, I can, but then I have a lot of email from craig newmark I actually should join maybe our marketing team, because that's brilliant it is brilliant.

Yes, it is. Um. Yeah, I don't think I had either. I might have thrown it out. Oh, wait a minute.

2:36:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Here's one from the guy who created it saying he's sick of it is leo frozen goodbye I'm reading oh, that was, this was from, uh, last october.

2:36:25 - Leo Laporte
I guess he liked having ed zitron on, so that just eliminates him completely, all right. Well, yeah, I'll tell you. You know what I'm, I am, I'm, I'm flexible, I'm nothing if not flexible, if, uh, if the majority says bring back craig newmark.

2:36:43 - Paris Martineau
One guy said, if you've been there, were like 20 people in the comments of the discord episode that said bring it back leo does not like being overruled.

That's why it's such fun only the way that we'll do it that we can make it a positive for the show and Leo won't feel bad if it's overrun is if it is in the five-star reviews of the podcast. That way we get a win, but also a bargaining chip, because then, if he doesn't do it, you can change your reviews, we can hold him hostage, we can seize the means of podcast production.

2:37:19 - Leo Laporte
What do you guys? What is the show capped? Are we still in it? What is that?

2:37:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Anthony's asking whether it's over. He's asking did we end it? Oh, no, this show never ends. This is the show that never ends.

2:37:33 - Leo Laporte
Jeff Jarvis, I said the thing with the jingle. He already said goodbye to me. He's also the author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis, now in paperback. The Web we Weave Never be in paperback, but you should get it anyway. Or listen to it on Audible and Magazine, which will be on Audible soon, very soon, yes, but AI, don't listen to it my voice. Thank you everybody for joining us. We will see you next. Who are our guests next week? Benito, do you know? Yes, you next. Who are guests next week, benito, do you know? Yes, next week, kate o'neill. Kate o'neill great, you're gonna love our interview with kate o'neill. All about ai. I'll see you. Then. We do intelligent machines every wednesday. I'm sure I know she's not the tech humans of math destruction.

What matters?

oh, text. Oh good, okay, yeah, yeah, no, she's good. There's another kate o'neill. We've had on in the past who wrote about math illiteracy, but that's another one. Uh, and bring back ed's. That's kathy o'neill. Kathy o'neill, thank you, you looked it up. Thank you back, ed's. That's kathy o'neill. Kathy o'neill, thank you, you looked it up. Thank you, um, we do intelligent machines every wednesday. You know what the problem is? It's the last show of the week for me. I'm exhausted. I only got a 63 sleep score. I haven't had anything to eat. Uh, my brain's not working, that's all excuses, excuses.

2:39:03 - Paris Martineau
Okay, we do this show ready to podcast and 2 pm pacific 5 pm eastern.

2:39:08 - Leo Laporte
Watch this. I'm going to calculate utc in my head 2100 utc try that at home how many hundreds of times have you said that over the past year? Well, oh, but it changes, it changes it changes once a year twice a year maybe twice a year.

Twice a year it changes I still have to think about it. That's all I'm saying. I still have to use my brain. Uh, you can watch the show live. We are on eight different streams. Watch that, watch this, watch this. Not everybody could do this for our club twit members. We are on discord, of course, but we're also on youtube, twitch, tiktok, xcom, linkedin, facebook and kick. Okay, you do that, you try that. We also, of course, are a podcast, which means you can download it.

What matters next? A book by kate o'neill, author of several books, including what. What Matters Next, as well as A Future so Bright and Tech Humanists. That's who's coming up next week, thank you. Thank you for posting that. I appreciate it. You can get the show at our website, twittertv, slash IM. You can also right there you'll see a link to YouTube. All the videos are there and you can use that to share a little clip with somebody, which is a great way to show them how much you love them. After the fact, you can also subscribe by going to your favorite podcast player and subscribing. That way, you'll get it automatically the minute we're done, which may never happen. Thank you, jeff. Thank you, paris.

2:40:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Thank you for putting up with us Are we capped, we're capped. We'll see you next week.

2:40:42 - Leo Laporte
Intelligent machines. I forgot the name.